Dr. Cooke in front of a truck load of tires.
Photo by Dr. Nicodemus
On Saturday September 14, Dr. Cooke and Dr. Nicodemus organized a day to clean up the Cedar Creek Waterway here in Abilene. This was the second such project, the first was on March 2, 2013. The Cedar Creek Waterway runs from Kirby Lake to Lake Fort Phantom. It is approximately a 15 mile trail and most of the other creeks in Abilene feed into it at some point.
The goal of the project is to make Cedar Creek a
commercial and residential attraction for the city of Abilene. This would be Abilene’s smaller scale version of the Riverwalk in San Antonio. The Cedar Creek Waterway is part of the mayor’s master plan for the city, but as of now there is no funding for the project. That is why it is important for us to volunteer to help this project along. The Cedar Creek Waterway Foundation is a nonprofit organization that heads up this project.
At the cleanup on the 14th, a total of 40 people came to help.
Mike Keenan Picking up Some broken glass.
Photo by Dr. Nicodemus
Among those were members of the Outdoors Club, Wildcats for Sustainability, the A&E Department, the AES Club and ACU Cornerstone professors. They worked on three miles of the trail and removed 45 tires, ten 40-gallon bags of plastic, five 40-gallon bags of aluminum and a 55-gallon drum of broken glass. All of these materials were recycled. Mayor Archibald sanctioned the event and the city provided trash receptacles. Volunteers also put up trail markers on about a mile and a half of the trail for biking and walking.
The trail is open to the public, but the work is far from finished. For more information contact Dr. Cooke and watch the blog for more news. The next official cleanup day will likely be in late January or early February.