Lots of volunteers helped to clean our area shores on Adopt-A-Beach day, April 26. At Magnolia Beach, 231 volunteers gathered up about 2,500 pounds of trash. Rhonda Cummins reports the most unusual items found were windshield wiper blades, shotgun shells and refrigerator parts.

The Lakeside 4-H Club cleaned the park at Swan Point. Connie Wooldridge reported that nine kids picked up about 75 pounds of trash and helped a tourist bring in a 42” drum.

A lot of volunteers were seen cleaning up King Fisher Beach, but totals were not available to us at press time.

At Point Comfort, the Hope High School Environmental Club cleaned up the beach and the Causeway.

At Boggy Nature Park in Port O’Connor, locals were greatly assisted by employees of Victoria Electric Cooperative.

VEC Employees

VEC Employees Become Beach Guardian of Boggy Nature Park

Victoria Electric Cooperative employees and their families participated in their first Adopt-a-Beach clean-up at the end of April as they recently applied to become the Beach Guardian of Boggy Nature Park. Beach guardianship of a location requires the group to adopt at least one mile of beach and participate in two statewide clean-ups and one group organized clean-up per year.

At the statewide spring clean-up Joe Wiatt, POC Chamber of Commerce Parks Management Representative, and other volunteers from the POC Chamber of Commerce kicked off the event and got things going for VEC’s Community Service Project leaders, Brittany Marsh and Alexa Cordova.

There were over 90 volunteers from VEC, POC Chamber of Commerce, local 4-H clubs, as well as many Calhoun County youth earning community service hours and it is estimated that over 700 pounds of trash was picked up.

VEC is very excited about their future in helping keep the beaches beautiful in a community they service. The next beach clean-ups will be held on June 21st and September 27th at Boggy Nature Park, if you are interested in volunteering at an event please contact Brittany or Alexa at 361-573-2428.

Cleaning up Boggy: Virgil Price, Joe Wiatt, Dain Whitworth, L’Roy Bell, Kenny Finster, Amanda Raby

Hope H.S. Environmental Club took part in the Adopt-A-Beach cleanup at Point Comfort beach at the Causeway. They have adopted this area and clean it up at least twice a year. They collected 18 bags of trash this last cleanup. -Laurie Weaver