Tenakee Springs Harbor Uplands and Community Clean up, 2018
When news spread around Tenakee this summer that a big landing craft was going to be delivering some goods to town, the Recycle Tenakee group started thinking about this as an opportunity to do a much-needed cleanup and get some accumulated junk and trash out of Tenakee, leaving on the outgoing landing craft. Tenakee ‘old-timers’ said it had been decades since such an effort had last happened.
We started with the Harbor Uplands. This is mostly a forested area adjacent to the shoreline next to our Harbor and over the years has, unfortunately, become the depository for abandoned ‘stuff’—old appliances, fishing gear, bicycles, 4-wheelers, trash. Tenakee does not currently have a solid waste management plan and to date it is the responsibility of individuals to take care of their trash and disposables in a responsible way.
On Labor Day weekend (August 31-September 1) 49 people labored hard to pick up trash and load it into large sacks for disposal. We managed to fill 40 ‘super’ sacks and formed 12 pallet-sized bundles of appliances, scrap metal, and odds and ends. And we weren’t done! We still had some super sacks available and Tenakee residents asked if they could bring down their own items from around their homes to dispose of in this clean-up. We were on a roll!
Thus, the Harbor Uplands Clean-up was extended to the Tenakee community and on September 20 and 21, we collected items from 22 households. We filled over 20 additional super sacks and collected old appliances and pallets of scrap metal, hazardous waste, and electronic waste (computers, TVs).
Through October, the super sacks and pallets were loaded onto the Landing Craft Liteweight for transport and proper disposal in Juneau. It’s been a huge task, at both a time and financial expense, but one that we all agree is well worth it. Our residents are walking through and using these forested areas again with a fresh look and an eye of what is possible. We are more conscious of our impact stream…what is the trash stream from products we purchase and use and then need to dispose of. We look ahead to the future inevitable cleanups and the responsible waste disposal that goes with it. We look ahead to minimizing what we need to throw away—by improving our efforts to reuse and recycle. We anticipate every couple of years taking on cleanups like this, that will complement the recycle pickups that Recycle Tenakee undertakes 5 or 6 times a year.
Our efforts bring us shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors, gaining a better understanding of our footprints here in Tenakee Inlet, and showing our respect for this forest and waterway that we call home.
And like most good things, it does take a village….of helpers, supporters….Chichagof Conservation Council helped provide needed funds, as did the City of Tenakee Springs; the Tenakee Community Church brought lunch for us on one of the workdays, and all the volunteers that picked up trash, scoured our beaches, and cared enough to show up and make a difference.
