Community Clean Up Day 2018—the Good, the Bad and the Lessons Learned
FOR RELEASE: May 30, 2018
Contact: Deborah Wallace, Lake Limerick Community Association Manager 360-426-3581
Community Clean Up Day 2018—the Good, the Bad and the Lessons Learned
Over 2018’s Memorial Day weekend, the Lake Limerick Country Club Homeowners Association sponsored a “Clean Up Day” event to provide members the opportunity to clear their yards and homes of unwanted and unsightly “stuff” at no charge. An industrial size roll-off waste container was spotted in the parking lot of the Inn so members could drop items off for disposal.
As many of you saw, Lake Limerick residents participated in the event enthusiastically, eventually leaving a small mountain of discards in and around the waste bin. Most residents respected the rules that they could not dispose of daily household garbage, truck canopies, vehicles and boats, animal carcasses and HAZARDOUS WASTE at the Community Clean Up.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets the message. On Tuesday, while operating a backhoe loading discarded trash into a waste container, one of our employees noticed a strange odor, became light headed and passed out for a moment. Emergency medical personnel responded and transported him to medical care. Mason County Fire District 5 personnel responded and cordoned off the area until a Department of Ecology HazMat crew could check out the remaining trash. Fortunately, they only found common items like household cleaners, paint, fertilizers and other items that when accidentally combined could form noxious fumes and hazardous materials and should not have been disposed of during this event.
The good news is that our employee was released from medical care and was back at Lake Limerick by early evening. The less good news is that properly disposing of the remaining trash may be more expensive if we have to treat it as a special material, all because some people abused a great opportunity to clean up the community by dumping semi-hazardous materials. The Homeowners Association will consider the lessons learned from this event when deciding if, when and how to provide its members a future opportunity to clean up their neighborhoods.
We also appreciate the prompt and constructive response from Mason Fire District 5 and the Department of Ecology.
