roadside cleanup
~ story and photos by Sara Clifford
For decades, some Brown County residents and visitors have used tucked-away ravines and winding roads as garbage dumps, and for about 10 years, volunteer groups have been working to clean them up.
On Easter weekend this year, before weather scuttled their plans, about two dozen Cordry- Sweetwater Lakes residents planned to pile into pickups and trailers and roll north along Nineveh Road to the Dollar General, bagging up what others left behind. It’ s an annual tradition, welcoming part-time residents back to the Lakes with a trash-free drive in.
Cigarette packs, empty miniature liquor bottles, food packaging and already-bagged trash are what they often find, said organizer Carrie Vavul. Clearly, some has been tossed from car windows; some may have fallen from uncovered garbage trucks. It’ s mostly small stuff, Vavul said, with the occasional car part.
Elsewhere in the county, it’ s a different story.
Volunteer group Keep Brown County Beautiful, with other volunteers from Cummins Inc. in Columbus, has conducted at least two major cleanups over the past seven years in ravines on Upper Oak Ridge Road and Green Road, where illegal landfills appeared
Cubmaster Derek Clifford and Cub Scouts from Pack 190 clean up Helmsburg Road just north of downtown Nashville.
and accumulated over decades. Brown County’ s only legal landfill, on Dunaway Road northeast of Helmsburg, closed in 1994.
“ You wouldn’ t believe the stuff we picked up,” said KBCB President Cathy Paradise: carpets, hundreds of tires, furniture, multiple appliances,“ anything trash-related, we found it.”
It’ s not confined to ravines, either. Staff from the Brown County Solid Waste Management District are called several times a year to pick up roadside hazards in the form of couches, mattresses, TVs, and even hot tubs.
Keeping Brown County beautiful is a big job, made bigger when few people are willing or able to do it.
Volunteers from KBCB used to organize a road cleanup each spring in coordination with the national Great American Cleanup, but it didn’ t
54 Our Brown County • May / June 2025