Nome holds spring cleanup week

Last Saturday, community members roamed town with bright yellow trash bags in the annual effort to rid the city of trash and debris as the winter’s snow cover has melted, exposing old “treasures.”
The City of Nome’s spring cleanup week culminated in a community wide push to clean up town and take the trash out, on Saturday, June 6.
From 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. KICY, the Nome Winter Sports Association and the City each hosted a location where bags of trash could be dropped off. Eight truckloads full of the yellow garbage bags were collected from Old St. Joe’s, the Icy View Firehall and the Nome Rec Center.
Over the course of the week, residents dropped off 92 loads at the monofill. An additional 65 loads were dropped off by businesses. The City’s U-Call, We-Haul service saw 51 requests during that same time.
Public Works Director Cole Cushman said that the haul was on the “light side of average.” Last year, Nomeites dropped 118 loads off at the monofill and the city cleared away 60 dump trucks full of garbage. Cushman was not bothered by the slight dip in numbers.  “I like to think it’s because Nome’s getting cleaner,” he said.
Cushman said that cleanup week gets Nome just that much cleaner as trash emerges out of melting winter snow. “Coming out of the winter, there’s a lot of garbage that gets mixed in with the snow,” he said.
Patty Burchell of KICY was hosting the drop off station outside Old St. Joe’s. She explained that trash could be traded for the chance to win a bicycle. “If you bring in a bag of trash, you get a blue ticket, and for 10 blue tickets, you get to trade it in for a red ticket,” she said. “That red ticket goes into a bucket, then, for a chance at a bike.”
Kinley Krift, dropping off bags of trash at Old St. Joe’s on Saturday afternoon, was raring for the bicycle. “My bike is really, really small. It’s smaller than my own brother’s, and I really wanted to get a new bike, because I always bike to my friends’ houses,” she explained.
Kinley said she feels like her family were heroes. “We just picked up a whole lot of trash.”
Her brother Fisher Krift agreed with the sentiment. “I think it’s fun and nice to pick up the trash, so that the environment stays healthy,” he added.
Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum Director Cheryl Thompson stepped up to help organize the event this year.
Thompson said the city-wide push to collect trash makes the town feel cleaner. “There’s old washers and dryers that probably have been in some yard for years, and then somebody says, ‘Okay, this is a good time to make a pile and have them pick it up.’”
Inside Old St. Joe’s, Presley Reader and Sophia Piscoya were handing out hot dogs to anyone who showed proof of a ticket. AC had donated the hot dogs, condiments were donated by Hanson’s and a cooler held sodas, purchased by NJUS.
Burchell said she’s volunteered for KICY at the event for years. The city offers $100 to nonprofits to man a dump station. “There are people that do make an effort to go out on the streets as well, but for a lot of them, it’s a good time to clean up the yard,” she said. “Things blow all winter, and whether it was initially your trash or not, there’s trash in your yard, and it’s nice to just pick it up and get it out of there.”
If you missed the chance to clean up, not to worry. The city’s landfill accepts trash for free every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and there will be a second cleanup in the fall – Cushman said they’re pushing for the middle of September.