Town officials are calling for volunteers to raise their hands and organize for a longtime New Canaan tradition that sees community members clear trash each Spring from our roadways, parks, downtown/village center, school grounds and elsewhere.
The 2014 “Clean Your Mile” campaign is scheduled for April 26 and 27. On that weekend, organizers and sponsors will mobilize to provide gloves, garbage bags and dumpsters (more details on that below).
Kathleen Holland, director of Inland Wetlands and Watercourses, here just outside the main "house" at Irwin Park.
“Clean Your Mile is a New Canaan Spring tradition that is over 40 years old, most likely originating out of some of the first Earth Day activities,” Kathleen Holland, director of Inland Wetlands and Watercourses, told NewCanaanite.com in an email. “Volunteers are recruited from service clubs, schools, church groups and members of the community. We look forward to improving the Town and at the same time helping the environment.”
To help ensure participants get to school grounds, parks, streets, parking areas and other public places, organizers are asking people who will lend a couple of hours to sign up with Kristi Ready at the New Canaan Department of Public Works: Kristine.Ready@NewCanaanCT.gov and 203-594-3090.
The bear that greets visitors to the Town Hall offices next to Walter Stewart's is ready for Clean Your Mile 2014. Are you?
Community group leaders here in any area—within churches, schools, businesses or neighborhoods, for example—are encouraged to organize their own bands of volunteers.
Area assignments are being organized now, Holland said.
One section of town that perennially requires special attention is that stretch behind New Canaan High School as you walk into the woods toward the YMCA.
Clean Your Mile is organized by Inland Wetlands and Public Works with assistance from the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, TD Bank and Rotary Club of New Canaan.
When the day comes—and we’ll run this information again—our Rotarians will provide garbage bags, which will be available (gloves too) at:
- Public Works, housed for now in the New Canaan Police Department at 174 South Ave.;
- Chamber of Commerce (they’re located in the Playhouse building on Elm Street, just above it);
- TD Bank at the corner of Elm and Grove Streets;
- And at Inland Wetlands, which is located at Irwin Park.
Dumpsters will sit in the Commuter Parking Lot off of Elm Street. Here’s part of the flier on the campaign:
