County sponsors clean-up

People who want to beautify Columbia County will get their chance Saturday at the Great American Clean-Up.

Columbia County Clean and Beautiful will play host to the clean-up from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Participants are asked to meet at the Columbia CountyGovernment Complex, 630 Ronald Reagan Drive, to help remove litter.

In last year's Great American Clean-Up, volunteers nationwide collected more than 110 million pounds of litter and cleaned more than 65,000 miles of streets and highways.

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"People really take care of Columbia County. Probably a lot better than other places," said Columbia County Recreation Department Director Charlie Beale, who also is the interim director of Columbia County Community Services.

"We just want to pickup some roadside garbage, clean up around the government complex, hit a couple of the park, and if people have got anything in their neighborhoods then we're asking the neighborhood associations to walk through their neighborhood and clean up around their front entrances," Beale said.

Statistics provided by Keep America Beautiful, the national body that organizes the annual clean-ups, say that it takes 10 volunteers one hour to pick up litter on a three-mile stretch of highway. It takes three hours for 50 volunteers to refurbish and paint playground equipment for a public park.

Clean and Beautiful is actively enlisting support from individuals, businesses, neighborhood associations and others to participate in the clean-up.

A cookout follows clean-up activities at the government complex at 1 p.m.

For more information on the Great American Clean-Up, call 261-4390.