ORANGE — This Saturday’s Lake Mattawa Association Cleanup Day is seeking volunteers.
Volunteers are invited to join the community trash pickup at Lake Mattawa this Saturday, June 26, at 9 a.m. Participants will meet at the boat ramp. A second clean-up day is scheduled for September 25 at 9 a.m. Trash bags will be provided, and participants are encouraged to bring their own gloves.
“It should be fun,” Former State Rep. and Orange Revitilization Partnership President Denise Andrews said. “We’re going to walk in pairs and pick up trash, and make the place beautiful.”
This weekend’s event will help enter the summer with a clean start. Gilmore said the intent of the second community clean-up day, in September, is to end the season on just as strong a note for community cleanliness.
This will be the third year in a row the Lake Mattawa Association has scheduled recurring community clean-up days. The lake clean-up effort become a greater focus when current association President Matthew Gilmore was elected three years ago, but he says he’s hesitant to call this just the “third” annual cleanup because he said the association has been maintaining the lake for decades before he took office.
“We’re just trying to do what we can to make the lake a better place, by continuing tradition that started when the associated formed back in 1927,” Gilmore said.
In addition to organizing the community clean-up days, Gilmore said the association conducted stump removal and work on the boat ramp last year. They also hold annual picnic days for residents who live around the lake.
Gilmore said his family has lived by the lake since 1953. He grew up spending summers there, and then in 2009 he purchased his parents’ summer house and converted it to a year-round home. He then joined and gradually became more involved with the Lake Mattawa Association, and was eventually encouraged to run for president.
The 2020 summer cleanup saw extra help from members of the UMass Masters Swim Team. When the Amherst campus closed in March 2020, the team lost access to the swimming pool. For most of last summer the team swam the perimeter of Lake Mattawa, four to five times a week, to practice. The swimmers wanted to participate in the cleanup as a way to give back to the Orange community members, many of whom cheered the swimmers on as they made their laps around the lake.
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.