Volunteers begin weekly trash cleanups

Damion Giacchino Sr. had just finished a polar plunge at the Shelton Yacht Club on Jan. 26 when he noticed some litter on the hillside across the street. He went to pick it up and discovered more than just a few discarded bottles and cans.

"As I got closer to the top of the hill I was blown away with the huge amounts of trash that was scattered for hundreds of feet and looked to be 5-plus feet deep in places," he told the Journal.

Giacchino filled the one bag he brought and went home, planning to return the following Sunday. The next week he brought 10 large lawn bags, stuffed them with garbage and left them by the road for the county to pick up. He posted pictures on Facebook of the work he completed, all of the remaining debris still left in the woods and said he'd be back again next week.

"When I returned I was surprised that there were six other community members that showed up to help. Together we cleaned up a big stretch of the west side hill just below where the homeless campers were and another part of the group cleaned up on the east side by the trestle. This time we piled more than 30 large bags across from the park and ride and 15 or so over by the trestle bridge," Giacchino said.

Police called him the next day.

Giacchino was told the state Department of Transportation "was not happy" and it cost them $2,000 to remove the bags.

"I'm like, OK, well county should be cleaning this mess up," he said.

Police said WSDOT would not press charges.

"It's nuts," Giacchino said.

"That pile of stuff, that's been building for probably 10 years now. The county has done nothing, he said. "They've turned a blind eye to it."

After the phone call, Giacchino was even more determined to continue the cleanup, he said.

Giacchino, who owns D's Custom Woodworks and Services, posted cleanup information on his business Facebook site and started the Mason County Cleanup Crew public Facebook group.

As of Tuesday, the group page has 180 members.

Volunteers have been shouldering the costs, including one contractor who provided a dumpster, paid for the permits to place it by the road and for flaggers to close a lane of the highway while placing the dumpsters.

"It cost him $450 for the flaggers," Giacchino said.

This Sunday will be the seventh week of cleanups and officials are starting to help, according to Giacchino.

The city has donated several vouchers for the landfill to cover dump fees, he said.

"After seven weeks, the city and county are finally stepping up because of all the pressure that's been put on them and the notice and attention that's been brought to the mess that's there. They've been ignoring it for so long. It's bad. It looks like a landfill up there," he said.

The cleanup crew also has a volunteer who works at Recovery Café in Shelton who offers services to the homeless living near the cleanup site.

Giacchino said volunteers follow a protocol of what to remove to ensure they are not removing the campers' possessions.

"We have a protocol of what we're collecting. We're not dealing with any tents where people are living. This is all what they have abandoned, what they are throwing away," he said.

The debris being removed is obviously garbage, according to Giacchino.

"Used needles are scattered all over the place," he said.

Volunteers keep the needles separate and Giacchino takes them home to put in proper containers for disposal.

He said they have removed numerous 5-gallon buckets of human waste. "It's disgusting," he said.

"All the water that's flowing into Oakland Bay is flowing right through this garbage," he said.

Some volunteers with the cleanup are homeless themselves.

"These are people that want a better life that are using the resources that are offered to them. By helping us, they're making themselves feel better," he said. "They're stepping forward."

Giacchino said the homeless volunteers are not the people living near the cleanup site in the woods.

"They are not the ones living on that hill. People living up there on the hill have given up all hope and they don't care," he said.

"They need mental counseling. They need drug counseling. They've gone past the point of caring for themselves or anybody else," he said. "They're very difficult to help. They don't want help anymore. They've given up on that. Help has not been there for them in the past," according to Giacchino, who used to be homeless.

"I was homeless before. I never lived like that," he said, referring to the campers on the hill.

"I never lost total respect. I made changes. I made decisions in my life that I was not going to be homeless. I corrected myself and my actions, my choices, to try and be a better person, live a better life," Giacchino said.

He worries that the dumping will return without solutions for the homeless people still in the greenbelt.

"The sheriffs now have permission to remove people from the property but without having a place for them to go, they're just going to trespass somewhere else and continue doing what they're doing. Until we resolve the root problem, it will continue," he said.

The cleanups happen every Sunday. This week, free lunch is being provided for volunteers, and there will be a morning and afternoon crew starting at 10 a.m. in front of the Oakland Bay Marina sign on state Route 3.

Now that a group is established, Giacchino hopes to clean other areas in the county.

"We'll get a couple of volunteers together with a pickup truck and go to a certain spot," he said.

"I'm not going to stop what I started. I'm going to continue to clean up Mason County."