Riverside Drive cleanup, Oct. 20

Press release from Dylan Case: 

Date: October 20th
Location: Riverside Drive/HWY 251/Old Marshall HWY
Location Start Point: Broadway Street turns into Riverside Drive at HWY 26 intersection
Location End Point: Marshall Bridge construction road block
Total Distance: 16 Miles

Event Schedule

10:00 AM: Arrive at Carpool Meeting Point at Ingles Parking Lot
All volunteers meet in the Ingles parking lot to consolidate vehicles to 16 to carpool to the cleanup meeting point. This is needed as the cleanup meeting point has minimal space for parking and we want to leave parking space for other people wishing to visit the park.

10:30 AM: Arrive at Cleanup Meeting Point at Woodfin Riverside Park
Arriving at the cleanup meeting point using the 16 carpool vehicles driven from Ingles on Merrimon Ave.

10:45 AM: Discuss Cleanup and Assign Road Segments
Overview cleanup process, assign road segments to each carpool vehicle or volunteer group, hand out trash bags, cones and safety vests.

11:00 AM: Carpool Vehicles Teams drive to Road Segments
Carpool vehicle groups drive to the closest safe parking spot off the road within their specific 1 mile road segment starting point.

2:00 PM:   Meeting at Woodfin Riverside Park for Shared Lunch
Carpool vehicle groups return from picking up trash back to the park. Free lunch is prepared and donated by local restaurants to the volunteers for supporting the community and the environment.

Event Notes

The total road distance for the cleanup is 16 miles. The suggested cleanup segment for each vehicle is 1 mile. So we will need 16 vehicles to cover the total distance. Each group of people carpooling in a vehicle will walk both sides of the road and cleanup trash for that 1 mile segment. This is provided we have enough vehicles and volunteers. The carpool idea is to reduce the amount of vehicles parked on the sides of Riverside Drive during the cleanup. This also reduces the amount of parking spaces used at Woodfin River Park which saves space for other park visitors during the event. Each 1 mile segment (16 total) will be pre-marked with a small flag with a number on it to help the volunteer groups to go to each segment and cover the full distance within that segment. Each segment number will be drawn randomly for each carpool vehicle group. The volunteers will initially meetup at Ingles on Merrimon Avenue to park and carpool with only 16 vehicles to Woodfin Riverside Park which has an adequate yet fairly small parking lot.

I will provide bright colored safety vests and gloves as well as bags for recycling and regular trash to the volunteers which will be donated by Asheville Greenworks. Large objects too big for bags will need to be set next to the road in groups for pickup from a vehicle/s with a truck bed in the volunteer group. The trash will be brought back to the park by the carpool vehicles or left in groups along Riverside Drive for pickup by the Department of Transportation.

I will provide free lunch to the volunteers which I hope to have provided via donation from local restaurants.

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