Communities in Vermont are still cleaning up from July’s catastrophic flooding. This Saturday a statewide effort to clear debris from public spaces is planned.
Clean Up Vermont is patterned after the state’s annual spring Green Up Day when volunteers spread out across Vermont to pick up trash. On Saturday the state is recruiting volunteers to help communities recovering from July flooding to clean up and spruce up.
Green Up Vermont Executive Director Kate Alberghini is coordinating the effort.
“It is not like people cleaning out their basements from flooding issues or it is not construction debris," Alberghini said. "So it is public space litter from the flood that has floated all of the bottles and cans and that type of debris into public spaces. There are other things in effect for homes and businesses right now and we don’t want to get in the way of any FEMA operations that will hopefully get homeowners some financial help for doing that type of clean up.”
The Green Up Vermont website lists participating communities. Alberghini suggests volunteers check the site or an app before showing up to see what projects are planned locally.
“They’re not all litter clean ups," Alberghini said. "Some are beautification projects, which has always been a part of Green Up Day as well. So they should go on the website, look for a town that is doing a cleanup project and they can either email to get signed up for the team or they can also download the Green Up Vermont app. They would be able to get updated messages on each of the various areas. And they’re welcome to just show up and just help beautify our areas that need help.”
The projects for Clean Up Day range from picking up debris to so-called beautification projects that will help restore public spaces. Barre City manager Nicholas Storellicastro says they will have volunteers focus primarily on parks and playgrounds.
“Dente Park which is a park that as you come right into the city you see the statue of a granite worker, was inundated, covered by muck and mud," Storellicastro said. "And so it needs some attention for reseeding and planting. We have Nativi Playground, which is right along the river, also particularly hit hard by the mud. So that’s where we’re going to try to focus our efforts here in the city. The playgrounds need some attention themselves just to clear some of the muck and then get some topsoil down and get some seeds in the ground so that we can return these parks back to their beauty.”
Storellicastro says if not for Clean Up Day those locations would have taken longer to be restored.
“They are certainly gems in our city but they’re not sort of the priorities for recovery at this point," Storellicastro said. "And so certainly without the assistance of these volunteers it would have just taken our staff longer to get to them and re-beautify them, so to speak. So this certainly will expedite that and return these parks and playgrounds to our residents on a much faster schedule.”
Storellicastro says volunteers should be prepared to do “heavier than gardening work” with hardy boots and gloves. He says volunteers are still regularly coming and eager to work, but the numbers have diminished.
“It certainly has waned from the early weeks after the disaster, and that’s normal, we expect that," Storellicastro said. "You know I think that the effort here is going to be tremendous. It’s easy to forget the trauma and mental health impacts of having to be constantly reminded of the flood. And that’s what happens when people see some of the parks that are still in rough shape. So I think from a normalcy perspective, from a mental health perspective, from a returning some of these beautiful spaces back to our residents’ perspective this is huge. As hard as it was to go through what we went through we need to have some sort of return to the before times and I think getting our parks back to the conditions they were in before the flood, it’s going to be terrific for our residents.”
Communities participating include Barre, Duxbury, Grafton, Johnson, Ludlow, Montpelier, Morristown, Waterbury, Hardwick, Marshfield, Londonderry, Cambridge and Plainfield.
