Kuna Butte is a great place for off-road recreation just south of town, but its also littered with a lot of illegally dumped trash. A local organization plans to clean up the area this Saturday, April 12th, and you are invited.
"If you can bring it here, you can take it to a dump," said Kristina Schmid with Mountain West Recreation Alliance.
She says she's fed up with the amount of trash illegally dumped in Kuna.
"I am not a person that can just sit back and say that's OK," said Schmid.
The local organization does service projects in the community on public lands.
"And so today we're here at Kuna Butte, because the trash is growing excessively over here," she added.
Kuna Butte is the main target for their upcoming trash cleanup, and Schmid says past events have removed at least 7 tons of trash.
"So this area is huge for dirt biking, side-by-sides, off-road vehicles, and Jeeps — any high-clearance vehicle. I sometimes see people come out here with campers and their dirt bikes, and they'll spend the weekend out here," she said.
Use of the area — especially for anything with wheels — is limited by the thousands of nails and burnt piles of trash littered around the trails.
"Those that play out here now feel like they have a responsibility to be here and keep it clean," Schmid said.
Lunch will be provided for volunteers, and J&M Sanitation is donating dumpsters to the cleanup.
"I will have supplies for everyone: gloves, trash bags, pickup sticks, shovels, rakes, and magnet rollers," says Schmid.
With all this trash, including burnt appliances, these areas are hard to completely restore.
"Especially once the chemicals are here, it will never be back to what it was, which is why we're supposed to use dumps, and we just hope to minimize the impact at least to the wildlife," Schmid said.
