When Cody Pate noticed dozens of old tires along the banks of the Holston River during a kayaking trip earlier this month, he couldn’t turn a blind eye and float on by.
Pate has been kayaking for fun recently but said: “It’s really been bugging me to see all the trash in there.”
On two recent trips, he loaded as many tires as he could on his kayak between the Derrick Park boat ramp in Church Hill and the Goshen Valley Bridge.
It took two separate trips on July 6 and July 10, but he got about 22 tires home. He stacked them in his yard to take to the Hawkins County Recycling Center.
Approximately 60 more tires were stacked up on a Holston River island just south of the future Holliston Mills park in Church Hill.
Now Pate is organizing a volunteer cleanup crew for July 27 to not only retrieve the 60 tires from what he is suitably calling “Tire Island," but also to collect tires and trash between Laurel Run Park and the Christian Bend boat ramp.
Volunteers must be able to bring their own boat or kayak and be willing to get dirty and wet for a good cause. Pate said they also need to being gloves and a “can-do attitude.”
Anyone interested in participating can call Pate at 317-645-5991.
Tire Island
“I’ve been kayaking down the Holston River, and I put in sometimes behind the Food City in Church Hill (Derrick Park) or I go down to Laurel Run Park,” Pate told the Review last week. “I’ve been picking up all the trash and garbage I could see in there, and the last two times (July 6 and July 10) we went down and we’ve been picking all the tires we could get out of there. We’ve gotten about 22 out thus far, but you haven’t seen anything yet.
“We couldn’t get any more on the kayaks,” he added. “We went to a place that has an ungodly amount. At least 100. We dug out at least 60 already, and there’s probably that many still in the water in just this one little area — after the Goshen Valley Bridge and before Christian Bend.”
They already cleared out the tires between Derrick Park and the Goshen Valley Bridge.
“Right after the Goshen Valley Bridge I found a huge spot where someone had been dumping tires, and that’s where we loaded up all the tires my second trip down on Wednesday (July 10),” Pate said. “We didn’t even get to the spot I originally wanted to hit and get all the tires out of there. There’s a little island — I’m just going to call it ‘Tire Island’ — where we took about 60 tires out of the water and stacked them up in a pile. There’s still probably that many more in the water there.”
Need more boats
The goal of the July 27 cleanup is to clear out “Tire Island” and all the old tires and debris down to the Christian Bend boat ramp.
“We’re going to start as early as possible because it’s going to take a minute, with the tires we’ve already got dug up and I couldn’t take out yet,” Pate said. “I’m trying to find a couple of people with boats who are willing to give up a couple of hours on that Saturday (July 27) and help us do the heavy lifting of dragging it down the river, as opposed to trying to kayak them all down again.”
Pate added, “We need something like a jon boat so we can just load them up. I can fit about 10 of them on a kayak, but it really sucks when it tips over in the middle of the water and you’ve got to drag them back out in water that’s up to your chest almost.”
Pate is a member of the United Citizens of Hawkins County, and he said that organization has taken on the river cleanup as a group project. He said it might also be a good project for high school students who need to earn community service hours.
They expect to load up the old tires into vehicles at the Christian Bend boat ramp parking lot and take them to the Hawkins County Recycling Center.
John Lilly, Hawkins County solid waste director, has agreed to take all the tires retrieved from the river and make sure they are disposed of at no cost to Pate and his fellow volunteers, Pate said.
Codie Pate
Published in The Rogersville Review - July 15, 2024
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