GILES COUNTY, Va. – The ReNew The New’s Ramps ‘N’ Roads spring river cleanup is set to be held on Saturday, and locals in Giles County are getting ready for the occasion.
The event is a community-based cleanup effort that asks volunteers to help clean up the New River. This year, the primary focus will be in areas that were impacted by Hurricane Helene and various other flooding events that have ravaged the area.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, so we decided to do two cleanups this year and that’s really just going to get us started,” said Chris McKlarney, Giles County Administrator.
McKlarney said Helene brought water levels along the New River to 19 feet in portions of the county, the second highest in history. The storm forced debris northward along its course, with tons of it ending up in Giles County and the islands that dot the river.
“We’ve got boats that came from more than 100 miles away that we’ve identified that are on these islands,” he told 10 News. “So, anytime you get a debris field like this one. You get a lot of trees that would wash in, they would get hung on other trees, and then they would just strain all the debris out.”
Each year since 2001, the ReNew the New cleanup has spruced up the river.
But the committee is getting help for this year’s daunting clean-up from the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, more than 500 of whom will join the 250 or so volunteers at several sites along the river.
“It’s an absolute privilege to be able to serve and be able to exemplify our motto, Ut Prosim, that I may serve,” said Ashlyn Schober, a Cadet Sgt. 1st Class and leader of Saturday’s effort. “It’s a privilege, not just a thing that we do. we want to be able to give back to our neighbors. we want to be able to help out.”
More than 100 of the cadets will be sent to at least one of the islands, which can only be reached by boat. Debris will be loaded on barges and then dumpsters to be carried away.
“We’ve picked up thousands of tons of debris and quite frankly, the river was really clean prior to Helene,” McKlarney said. “We really had to look for trash when we had our annual cleanups, but we’re kind of back to square one now.”
But he said Saturday’s effort will go a long way toward getting the river back where it was before Helene.