The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

There has been a major cleanup effort underway since last week on Bailey Road. Donna Scales, Orange County Parks director said they hope to be completed today.

Parks department employees pick up trash around the pier and dump the trash cans on a daily basis, but there has been lots of trash in the water and among marsh grasses that they haven’t been able to clean up in a long time due to lack of a means to reach it and resources for labor.

For this six day clean-up, county prisoners were utilized and they received assistance from the city of Bridge City. A small boat was used to collect trash that could not be reached by land.

Clark Slacum, county engineer said, “They are trying to make Orange County look better for this upcoming bass tournament. We’re trying to put our best foot forward.

Scales is trying to do a bigger clean-up than she normally would along Bailey’s Road. On any given day, the parks department picks up trash around the fishing pier and empties the litter barrels.

“This time, we got special permission from the game warden to put a little boat in there beside Bailey (Road) and we’ve got guys out there trying to pick up floating litter that ends up at the edge of the marsh and along the canal where people are crabbing,” said Slacum. “They have picked up chairs, garden hoses, old barrels, all kinds of stuff that gets in there one way or another. Some of it is probably left over from Hurricane Ike.”

Slacum said, “When they get it all cleaned up, I’m going to send a mowing crew down there and we’re going to mow the right-of-way on both sides of Bailey, to make it look as good as we can make it.”

“We try to help each other when we can,” said Slacum.

“It’s something that needed to be done for a long time,” said Scales. “We finally got everybody together where we could do it at one time. We want to clean it up nice for the citizens, the birders and even school kids they bring out here. It’ll be nice. It will be presentable,” she said.

“It just happens to fall with the bass tournament; the clean-up for that. It really needed it. There was a lot of trash on that water.

Their goal was to have everything complete by today.

Scales wanted the public to be aware of the lengths they have gone through to clean up the area and ask their assistance to keep it clean.

“We need help,” said Scales. “This isn’t something we can do every month; spend six days out there picking up trash.”