Community members got together during the weekend to finish cleaning up along Claymore Road close to the Little Qualicum River Fish Hatchery.
Benjamin Klein-Beekman, a Grade 10 student at Ballenas Secondary School, was joined by volunteers from the Parksville Rotary Club and the B.C. chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers to remove a dump truck’s worth of trash from the area on Sunday, June 12.
This weekend’s efforts were a continuation of a cleanup started in late April.
“It all kind of started with my dad and I going along, just seeing what’s out here,” Klein-Beekman said. “And there was lots of garbage out here, so we just got tired of it.”
READ MORE: Parksville student overwhelmed by the volume of trash strewn on Claymore Road
He said he brought the issue to the attention of one of his teachers, who sits on the school’s environmental taskforce. Klein-Beekman also contacted the Regional District of Nanaimo, who waived the fees for dumping the refuse pulled out of the area.
The garbage removed in the second round included a couch, a bunch of steel, wooden building material and an abandoned travel trailer, which had to be dismantled.