Volunteers get plenty of help at Americana Drive cleanup
The semi-annual cleanups along Americana Drive in Annandale are drawing more volunteers and more help from the county and other community partners.
Forty-four volunteers turned out for the cleanup on Presidents’ Day. They filled 191 bags of trash and collected at least 19 tires and big piles of construction debris and furniture.
The cleanup was organized by local resident Amy Gould and Friends of Accotink Creek, who’ve been long concerned about how commercial contractors and residents are using the area between Americana Drive and the beltway sound wall as a dumping ground.
At the most recent cleanup, the Fairfax County Police Department patrolled the area and VDOT put up a digital sign warning drivers to look out for the volunteers along the road.
Conrad Mehan of the Department of Public Works and Environmental Services and a team from the recycling facility in Lorton provided traffic cones and removed the large items.
Braddock Supervisor James Walkinshaw and his staff member Sally Kidalov helped with coordination, ensuring all the pieces fit together.
Terry Angelotti of FACETS, the strategy director for the Opportunity Neighborhoods – Annandale initiative, provided the FACETS van and pitched in to help where needed.
The Vistas of Annandale provided volunteers and offered the restrooms in their business office during the event.
Operation Stream Shield, a county program that employs shelter residents to clean up streams, came out to Americana Drive a few days earlier, which allowed the Presidents’ Day volunteers to focus on specific zones.
Another cleanup of Americana Drive will be scheduled for the fall.
Awesome! Thank you, Amy Gould, and all the volunteers, Friends of Accotink Creek, Supervisor Walkinshaw, FACETS, Vistas of Annandale, Operation Stream Shield, VDOT, Fairfax County Police, and DPWES for coming together to clean up Americana Drive and prevent this trash from entering Accotink Creek. Makes my heart sing to see such community spirit!
Many thanks to all our hard-working volunteers! We hope the dedicated actions of neighbors will prick the consciences of the litterbugs and dumpers who haunt Americana Drive. No neighborhood deserves to be treated with the disregard and neglect that is evident along Americana Drive.
What virtuous masks adorn you!
-Frank
He/him/they
Perhaps the littering warning signs need to be in several languages — and let’s increase the fine for construction dumping so it’s higher than fees at the county transfer station. Kudos to volunteers and community engagement.
Thank you volunteers and all involved.
I live in one of the condo’s on Americana Dr. and want to say “Thank you!” to all who volunteered.
Back in the 1970s there was no need to clean up this trash, because people didn’t dump it. What changed?
I happened to notice that people are dumping lots of trash at the end of Wadsworth Court. That also didn’t happen back then. What changed?
Annandale has turned into a dump. What happened? It used to be a very nice little town. It was very clean. It was very safe. It’s not development that changed – there was the same amount of business (or perhaps more) back then.
It’s so sad. What changed?
Well, I moved here in 1995 and it was still a beautiful area. Alot has changed. In 2008 VDOT cleared the density of foliage at Americana to install soundwalls with the widening of 495. The trees there used to be the density of Fitz Hugh Park and it was never dumped in because you couldn’t find a way in. Simultaneously the construction landfill closed making it difficult at the end of a day to clean up job sites, and paying a fee at the landfill. There are other issues in some instances but VDOT needs to step up to the plate and resolve some of this. These problems did not exist there until the main event back in 2008. Fines for dumping need to be enforced the county won’t enforce on state land. It is a jurisdictional issue and is not easy to resolve.
The kids are cleaning up construction debris? I thought it was ordinary garbage from the neighborhood?
This is where you live keep it clean or is this how you want your children and the future generation to grow up, cleaning up your mess or may be you dont care.