Extreme spring cleaning

A ground squirrel darts underneath the pale-pink flowers of a desert peach plant in bloom, the animal squirming and bounding its way up the steep sandy slopes of Goni Canyon through the colorful ornaments of spring before sniffing out a rusted aerosol can and then burrowing out of site.

The fluted brag of a meadowlark echoes from its perch on an air compressor across the ravine while a filthy-green teddy bear lies face-down in the sea of trash, apparently having given up trying to find some kind of refuge in the mass of muck and refuse.

"The place is filled with some pretty strange junk," said Debbie Bunch, one of several dozen volunteers who spent Saturday morning under a sun hat with a trash bag in hand, doing her part trying to clean up the heavily littered acres of BLM land at the end of Goni Road just north of Carson City. "I heard someone found a pair of underpants and part of a golf cart already," she said. "It's amazing that people will go to all this trouble to dump stuff all the way out here when it's only a couple of bucks to take it to the dump."

Bunch watched a Cinderlite earth-mover empty a car seat and at least one mattress from its huge shovel into a scow-sized Dumpster, donated to the cause by Waste Management.

At the controls of the $375,000 machine was Cinderlite owner, Greg Lehman. He said he manages to scare-off some would-be dumpers with his camera, but inevitably, the trash finds its way in. Lehman owns about 1,200 acres of land in the area.

"They dump all kinds of stuff. I'll go through it and if I find a name or address I'll call the Health Department. They can be pretty persuasive at getting people to come back and pick up their trash."

"You'd be surprised at how dumb some people are," agreed Tom Gray, head of the Goni Canyon Preservation League. "Last year we found a stack of about 100 magazines up in the hills. They still had the dumper's address labels on them."

Gray, whose wife, Lynn, and daughter, Zoe, helped out on the clean-up, said what really troubles him is the poisonous and carcinogenic stuff they find.

"It's totally illegal," he said, climbing up the ravine, a microwave oven in one gloved hand and a can of brake fluid in the other. "We found five or so big jugs of used oil out here already today. People have to dispose of this stuff properly. The people who are doing this have no value for the land."

Mark Struble, public affairs officer for the Carson City office of the BLM echoes Gray's complaints. "Washing machines, couches - it's all a real pain," he says. "And it's getting to be a real toxic problem. Some people toss beer cans out of their cars; others toss out the cars."

Struble says the Carson City office is one of the smaller ones in the BLM system. "We manage the equivalent of two Yellowstone National Parks with five percent of the staff of one," he says.

"In Nevada," says Struble, "BLM land is really everybody's extended backyard. We appreciate when groups come forward to help out but we advise people to be real safe and watch out for things like oil and hypodermic needles. You never know what you're going to find out there."

Gray hopes one day the only thing he'll find out in Goni Canyon is nature.

n Contact reporter Peter Thompson at pthompson@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1215.