Young Volunteers Step up to Clean Jal Lake

By John Earp

Last Saturday, a handful of volunteers headed up by Jal Firefighter and local business owner, Joe Cole, spent over an hour cleaning trash from the Jal Lake. All pastors in Jal had been asked by Cole if they would promote the cleanup to their congregations, and a general call for volunteers was also placed on Facebook, saying the group would meet at the lake at 10:30 a.m. to start retrieving garbage from the lake. Besides the one senior volunteer to show up, Ward Goldschmidt, all the rest of the volunteers represented Jal Church of God in the cleanup. No other local church was represented at the cleanup, unfortunately. Mature volunteers, such as Cole, Goldsmith and Pastor John Earp raked trash in from the edges of the lake, while youngsters waded out to retrieve debris that was too far to be reached by rakes. In total, three trash bags full of garbage were retrieved from the lake as well as some trash (mainly empty beer cans) that were picked up from around the walking track and other grassy areas of the park. The majority of the garbage in the lake was along the north shore, which was to be expected given that the winds in the area come from the south almost all the time. The cleanup effort took about 90 minutes. Future cleanups will no doubt be necessary, given the common problem in our area of careless individuals either littering in the park or throwing trash in their pickup bed, only to have it blow out later. Lea County is supposedly a “Litter-Free Zone,” according to numerous signs along area highways, but without the help of conscientious volunteers and hopefully, city workers, trash obviously will continue to accumulate at the lake in the future, especially with the windy weather that is typical of our region. If a small group of eight willing workers can clean the lake up in an hour and a half, a group of, say, 20 could surely do it in half the time. Let’s all do our part as members of the community to help keep our beautiful park clean.