The Great American Clean-Up set for April 5

It's that time of year again to start cleaning out your closets and garages for spring. That also means it's time for the "Don't Mess with Texas Trash-Off" held each spring the first Saturday in April.

The signature litter prevention event of The Great American Clean-Up, it is the single largest one-day cleanup event in the State of Texas. More than 55,000 volunteers across the state will be offering their time to help keep our state beautiful.

Keep Chandler Beautiful, an affiliate of Keep Texas Beautiful, once again will offer its services to help coordinate the trash collection ef- fort for the Chandler area. Citizens are urged to bring their trash to the Henderson County Courthouse Annex building in Chandler on FM 315 S. from 8:00am until 1:00pm, April 5th to drop off.

Rick Ford, president of KCB, said there will be workers present to assist in unloading the trash into large commercial dumpsters. All items will be accepted with the exception of tires, batteries, and garbage. Appliances will be accepted as long as the coils are removed.

"It seems to be getting bigger each year," Ford said. "We started a few years ago with two dumpsters and now we are easily filling four or more. Each commercial dumpster will hold several tons. That's a lot of trash. We've seen a little bit of everything brought in over the years from Chandler and the surrounding area. Nothing surprises us anymore."

"It's a total community effort that day. We've had church groups and civic organizations in the past help pick up litter along the roads inside the City limits. The City provides us with the dumpsters through their trash collection agent and our County Commissioner, Ronny Lawrence, has always been kind enough to provide us with a backhoe and personnel to operate it."