My Life. My neighborhood. Our world.

Michael Richards, President of Oakhill Neighborhood Assoc. organized the Americorps Green Corp.Team and 80 volunteers to carry out a block by block clean-up blitz in the flooded zone of Oakhill/New Bohemia on Saturday April 18, 2009. Don Steichen of Harbor Neighbors did the same a week or so before in the Ellis Harbor District. Now, this citizen initiative is a citywide effort in all of the flooded neighborhoods.

Here are the upcoming dates where you help is needed:

• May 2 – Northwest Neighborhood Rake and Shovel Brigade led by N.W. Prez, Frank King
  Meet at Double Inn Parking Lot in Time Check at 629 Ellis Blvd. at 9 AM
• May 9 – SW/Czech Village Rake and Shovel Brigade led by SWAN Prez, Greg Stokesbury
  Meet at Riverside Roundhouse Parking accross from Museum on 16th AVE. S.W. at 9 AM
• May 16 – Continue back in Oakhill, Rake and Shovel Brigade led by Oakhill Prez, Michael Richards
  Meet at Horizons Family Services Parking Area at 9th Ave and 5th ST. at 9 AM.
• May 23 – All River Alliance Presidents meet at Taylor School for TANA Rake and Shovel Brigade
  Meet at Taylor School Parking Area at 9 AM.

We will use rakes to gather the remainder, glass, nails and other small remainder debris that remain after the truck and claw removal of flood debris along City Sidewalks/City Right of Way. The Green Corps.,Oakhill Neighbors, CRN, SWAN, Rotary,NW Neighbors and other volunteers will gather and bag this remainder debris. These bags will be stacked at one defined corner of each square block. The City Solid Waste Agency will then be notified to pick up the bags of dangerous debris.

We will clean as much as we can between 9 am and Noon. At Noon, we go to Metro High Dining for a community lunch. At the end of each day, we will evaluate progress. (Metro Back Door at 8th Ave.)

A few weeks after the Flood, Oakhill President Richards requested that the City Government place a construction dumptster at each square block corner for direct deposit of debris. This cost saving request went unheeded. The random dump and claw method has now caused 1-2 million in damage to water valves in the City Right of Way. The Claw method of debris removal has been extremely penny wise and dollar foolish. It would have cost a lot less in city funds and labor to place dumpsters at each corner, for direct deposit of debris (that was the method Downtown, where city government paid for construction dumpsters). It is simple logic that it costs less to move debris once into a construction dumpster than it does to dump it randomly at the curb, move it two or three times and then take months to clean up all of the remainder glass and nail debris.

We cannot go back and correct the "random debris dump" that took place in front of thousands of homes. We must go forward with a solution to this major safety problem. It is now Spring of 2009, almost one year after the flood. The problem is, the random dump/CLAW method has now left a "mine field" of dangerous glass and nails sticking out of boards all over the flood zone.

There are now thousands such glass and nail "mine fields" in front of and around the thousands of flooded homes. It is urgent that all this glass and boards with exposed nails be removed before they become hidden hazards when grass and weeds grow... -- Imagine what will happen to a neighborhood child's foot if they step on these dangerous objects? Imagine what would happen as hundreds of volunteers come to the flooded zones with lawn mowers that can throw broken glass as lethal missiles? This must be dealt with now.

The challenge is, million dollar consultants hired by the City have not come to street level, they are oblivious to the on the ground reality in the flood zones such as this dangerous debris.

Since there has been no "official action" from City Government to this present and extreme danger of the remainder glass and nails, Neighbors at the grass roots level are actively bringing a solution to the ill advised random debris dumping that has taken place for the past 10 months; We will remove these hazards now. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Call the Block Blitz Coordinator Michael Richards at 319-213-2051

We need 100 Volunteers for every Saturday in May. Come on Down, join in.

Glass and Nails Flood Debris Removal is growing into a grassroots movement in Cedar Rapids