Pocahontas County -Make It Shine!

 

Cara Rose, Executive Director of the Pocahontas County Convention and Visitors Bureau tells us about an exciting roadside litter clean-up program kicking off in the county, and how you can participate.

Cara, can you explain to our listeners the Make It Shine program?

“Sure Tim, I’d love to share information about a campaign that myself, along with Charlie Sheets and other groups and organizations around the county are coordinating,” said Rose. “It is the Department of Environmental Protection’s campaign -Make It Shine – and is designed to clean-up our roadsides. Over the course of the last couple of years, litter has really become an eyesore, particularly along our highways.”

“The plan is to initiate this road clean-up on Earth Day, which is April 22nd, and carry it through May 8th, which that first week in May is National Travel and Tourism Week. The campaign that I am promoting through the Convention and Visitors Bureau is ‘A Hundred Miles and a Hundred Dollars Per Mile.’  So, we are asking that our local groups, organizations, Adopt-a-Highway (groups) and businesses support this campaign by committing to cleaning up at least one mile of highway, and up to ten miles. And ultimately with the goal to get to one-hundred miles cleaned up in the county.”

“The basic way this will work is you call up the Visitor’s Center (304-799-4636) and get registered as a group who is interested in cleaning up the roads. We’ll have a form that you fill out, then, once you’ve completed the clean-up on that designated road -whether it’s one mile or up to ten miles- you will report back that it has been done, and we will contribute a hundred dollars per mile to your civic organization, or, lets say you are already a registered Adopt-a-Highway group, but you don’t have an official organization, or you’re a business and you are cleaning up a specific portion of the highways as a business partner, we will contribute that contribution to a local charitable organization. And you identify who that organization is.”

“So ultimately it will be ten-thousand dollars going back to our community for these road cleanups. This would be supporting our 4H clubs, our civic groups, Scouts, youth groups, and other charitable organizations that you would like to contribute to. We will be coordinating supplies that you need. We’ll be coordinating vests and road signs that you will need for safety reasons as well.”

“And the other component to that is keeping it clean once we do the clean-up. I know that within the school system, within all of our organizations that we partner with, we talk a lot about not littering. So, my mantra for a long time has been to pick-up at least one piece of litter every day. If all of us did that -we have about eighty-four hundred people in the county -three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, just think about how much litter that would be if we equate that out.  Pick up a bag of trash we might see along the highway, if there is a safe place to pull over. And, this is really about us, the residents of Pocahontas County, who care about this place. We live here for a reason. It is a beautiful place to live, and sometimes we thing that it’s somebody else’s responsibility to pick up litter. But there really is no specific person or group or business or entity that is really responsible for picking up litter. So that means it becomes our responsibility.”

“So, I really encourage anybody who is listening, if you are interested in participating in this program, call me and get registered. I will be happy to give you all the information and the details.”

Story By

Tim Walker

Tim is the WVMR News Reporter. Tim is a native of Maryland who started coming to Pocahontas County in the 1970’s as a caver. He bought land on Droop Mountain off Jacox Road in 1976 and built a small house there in the early 80’s. While still working in Maryland, Tim spent much time at his place which is located on the Friars Hole Cave Preserve. Retiring in 2011 as a Lieutenant with the Anne Arundel County Police Department in Maryland, Tim finally took the plunge and moved from Maryland to his real home on Droop Mountain. He began working as the Pocahontas County Reporter for Allegheny Mountain Radio in January of 2015.

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