Cleaning up: Friends of the Trail marks 20 years of keeping public lands trash-free

Published 3:12 pm Tuesday, July 19, 2016

As garbage piles up in trails, campgrounds, rivers and public lands every year, Friends of the Trail is called in to help. North Bend residents Wade and Tania Holden have owned and operated the not-for-profit organization since April 15, 1996, for more than 20 years now, cleaning up trash and making an impact in the fight against illegal dumping in Washington State.

Wade Holden, a fencing contractor for 23 years, has spent a lot time backpacking around the state. During a trip up to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, he and Tania found trash everywhere along the trails.

The trash came from campers who did not clean up before they left and from intentional garbage dumping by people trying to avoid disposal fees at county transfer stations.

The state of the public lands they had seen motivated the couple to do something about the trash themselves.

“We stayed there that night and we were sitting there, looking at the garbage, and I was telling her ‘if you could put together a non-profit to do roadside cleanup for community service maybe you could make a little impact,'” Holden said. “So the light bulb went off and that’s exactly what we did when we got home. We researched it and figured out how to get our non-profit status. They gave us our designation after six months and we hit the ground running.”

After some of the initial clean up work by Friends of the Trail, Holden said the organization caught the attention of the King County Council and with the help of councilmember Larry Phillips, was able to secure some early funding.

“We got hooked up with King County Solid Waste after that and several other agency funds, some forest service money,” he said.

“When we first started Friends of the Trail, King County didn’t even have a response team for illegal dumping. We were at it for four years before the Department of Ecology invited me to sit in on some of their meetings on how they were going to start dealing with this illegal dumping thing across the state.”

Friends of the Trail now works with county agencies around the state to clean up illegal dump sites.

“They see this stuff and report it to King County through the Illegal Dumping Hotline (1-866-431-7483), everyone is finding this stuff because King County has got a huge amount of property all over the place. When they see this stuff, they report it and then we respond and it’s pretty efficient,” Holden said.

Friends of the Trail employs crews of people looking to serve court-ordered community service time. Holden said he often hears from people who want to serve big chunks of time all at once rather than two to three hours a week.

Holden and his crews work on weekends in order to get around scheduling conflicts that community-service volunteers may have. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, Friends of the Trail works in King and Snohomish Counties, while on Mondays and Tuesdays they are over in Kittitas County.

Over the years, Holden has seen similar groups start working to clean up trash as well, but eventually they stop. Not only has Friends of the Trail been around for a long time, they also do the work that no one else is willing to do, Holden said.

“There have been lots of little groups that have come along through the years and they are interested in their own little neighborhood trails,” he said. “A lot of stuff, (if it) doesn’t have camping sex appeal, they don’t want to have to pick up, no matter how good their intentions are. We have cut our teeth in a lot of really scary areas.”

In 20 years of operation Holden has pulled 147 cars from the Middle Fork. The organization pulls about 113 tons of loose garbage each year out of public lands. They also pull out an equal amount of larger items like tires, appliances and vehicles, Holden explained.

“We have moved thousands of tons of crap throughout the years. Our slowest years have been the last few and we are still moving 113 tons of trash a year, and that’s excluding other stuff like appliances,” he said. “My wife and I started this thing simply because we wanted to make a difference, and we have.”

For more information about Friends of the Trail, visit http://www.friendsofthetrail.org.