ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- When the long Alaska winter comes to an end, months’ worth of snow and ice melts, often revealing a build-up of trash within heavily trafficked areas of the community.
A slew of base and community agencies banded together to clean the Mountain View community of Anchorage, Alaska, April 28 through May 5, 2018.
Some of the participating agencies included the Boys and Girls Club of Alaska, Cook Inlet Housing Authority, Mountain View Community Council, Municipality of Anchorage, as well as some Airmen from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.
Mountain View Community Council has been sponsoring the annual spring cleanup event for more than 25 years.
“The JBER support made this event the success that it was,” said Daniel George, Mountain View Community Council treasurer. “We couldn’t have collected nearly the volume we were able to achieve without all the extra hands. We are extremely grateful for the support. The results far exceeded our expectations, and now the neighborhood looks fantastic and ready for summer.”
The majority of the JBER Airmen who supported the event were 25 students of Airman Leadership School class 18-2, an in-residence professional military education course that develops Airmen to be frontline supervisors.
“I’m impressed with the students’ hard work and all the time they spent helping the community, in addition to the workload of ALS,” said Tech. Sgt. Michael Felicio, 673d Air Base Wing professional military education instructor. “We couldn’t have done it as smoothly as we did if it weren’t for the other instructors and students all coming together to achieve a common goal.”
In all, the participating agencies removed more than 100 tons of waste from the community, allowing for cleaner spring and summer recreation for residents.