On Monday, March 6, local citizens banded together to clean up trash from a makeshift tent city on the banks of the Greenbrier River in Caldwell.
The tent city is located near the Caldwell Bridge on Stonehouse Road, and after the leaves fell last fall, the amount of garbage collected in the area became apparent to passersby.
According to citizen Sara Jones, after worrying that high water from the river might result in the garbage being washed downstream, local men Roger Honaker and Mark Falls, who owns the nearby golf driving range, got together to begin cleaning up the riverbanks.
Honaker began gathering the garbage by hand, while Falls cut brush.
“It was wet and heavy,” said Jones of the garbage Honaker was hauling by hand to the road.
But soon, people from the nearby quarry business, RBS, noticed the effort and employees pitched in with manpower and equipment to aid in the cleanup.
“The Greenbrier River is a treasure for us that live here, and we all should want to protect her and her beauty,” said Jones, who also thanked the Greenbrier County Landfill for their help in the project. “We should all be thankful to live in a community where people still help others and want to keep our community beautiful.”