Nancy Schultz stood on the corner of Mill Plain Boulevard and Franklin Street with a wagon full of plastic bags, buckets and garbage grabbers. She put on a neon yellow vest — “I ♥ Hough” emblazoned on the back — and peered toward a sound wall along the north side of Mill Plain.
The sun was shining in a cloudless sky, the air crisp. The abandoned clothes, car seat and wheel-less shopping cart that were once hidden beneath a blanket of snow and ice were once again exposed to passers-by.
“Couldn’t ask for a better day to pick up trash,” Schultz said as she headed toward the wall.
Schultz and a team of volunteers from the Hough neighborhood — they call themselves SWAT, the Sound Wall Action Team — have for the last two years spent about an hour each Monday cleaning up the stretch of Mill Plain bordering their neighborhood. In the summer, they meet at 8:30 a.m. During the winter, they’re out there at 1:30 p.m.
The pile of debris along the wall east of Franklin Street is the site of an abandoned homeless camp. Schultz called the city of Vancouver about the discarded suitcase, towels, blankets and large cushion a few weeks ago. But then the winter weather arrived, and the site remained.
About 30 feet from there, Schultz pointed out a car seat and a discarded Christmas tree.
“Homeless people don’t carry around car seats. Homeless people don’t throw away Christmas trees,” Schultz said. “What we’ve found is, trash is a magnet for trash.”
“Sometimes, it seems overwhelming,” she said.
Still, the volunteers return every week. They’ve made some progress: illuminating the alcoves has reduced reports of criminal activity, and the Mutt Mitt station has resulted in fewer piles of dog feces on the sidewalk.
But every week the volunteers fill a 96-gallon garbage can with trash they pick up along the quarter-mile stretch of Mill Plain.
“There’s no decrease in the trash. There’s no decrease in the number of needles,” Schultz said. “I think if we were to quit, that trash would build up quickly.”
Neighborhood effort
The cleanup efforts began after Heidi Owens moved into the neighborhood in November 2014. She immediately noticed piles of trash in an alcove near her house.
“I didn’t like what I saw out there, so I went out and cleaned up,” she said.
Schultz, who was her neighbor, joined Owens and began championing the cleanup efforts, Owens said.
They talked about the cleanup at neighborhood association meetings, and others volunteered to help. Waste Connections gave the group a garbage can. Clark Public Utilities installed lights in the alcoves. And grants paid for disposal stations for dog poop and cigarette butts.
“The graffiti has gone way, way down,” Owens said. “And we don’t see the pileups in the alcoves.”
But one area of concern for Schultz and Owens that remains is the alcove artwork.
The walls of the alcoves are adorned with clay tiles decorated by children at Hough Elementary School. The tiles are made of low-fire clay. When the tiles freeze in cold weather, then thaw, pieces of the tile break off and fall to ground, Owens said.
“It can’t handle the weather, so it breaks,” she said. “We got a lot of damage this time.”
The damaged artwork is what motivated Schultz to first get involved. They’ve been searching for a way to preserve or replace the tiles, but they’ve yet to find a solution since the effort would be costly.
Schultz has another issue she hopes to resolve: the trash piles at the camp sites. On a recent trip to Portland, Schultz noticed city-provided trash and recycle bins in areas where people set up tents. Those areas don’t seem to have nearly as much trash as places without the bins.
“Give people trash receptacles, they may use them,” she reasoned.
While she doesn’t think the bins would eliminate all of the trash along the Mill Plain sound wall, it may help reduce the amount of food wrappers, beer cans and plastic bottles the group cleans up every Monday.
“No matter what gets done, the trash doesn’t stop,” Schultz said. “I don’t see any end to this.”
