Cleanup of Sand Dunes Area Catches On in Big Way

Orange resident Jennifer Whyte never dabbled in volunteer work until she got fed up with trash piling up at her favorite off-roading spot two years ago at the Imperial Sand Dunes in Glamis, east of San Diego.

Visitors wouldn’t pick up after themselves, so she decided she was going to try to rally hundreds of people to clean up the sand dunes, considered one of the largest and busiest off-highway vehicle areas in the nation, during a one-day event in 1998.

The 27-year-old Kaiser Permanente secretary spent months recruiting sponsors and volunteers, ordering T-shirts, and hoping her efforts would be worth the time she and her husband, Rob, spent preparing for the first Glamis Dunes Clean Up.

More than 1,000 people showed up that first year. Two thousand bags of trash were collected from camp sites.

“We ran out of T-shirts by 10 in the morning and the people kept on coming,” Whyte said. “I couldn’t believe that many people showed up. It was overwhelming. The energy and just being out there, there are no words to describe the feeling.”

In 1999, more than 2,000 volunteers collected 5,000 bags of trash, and Whyte expects about 3,000 during this year’s massive one-day event Jan. 15.

The effort will include a raffle, a free barbecue, and a “Leave No Trace” education program to reduce the need for future cleanups.

The Bureau of Land Management--an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior that administers 264 million acres of the nation’s public lands--teamed up with Whyte when she began the effort. The agency honored Whyte last spring for her exceptional efforts in preserving public land.

She was one of 11 volunteers chosen from 20,000 nominees across the nation to receive the 1999 Bureau’s National Volunteer of the Year award.

“I didn’t even know they nominated me,” said Whyte, who is also a part-time Santiago Canyon College student. “It was really neat to go to the nation’s capital and be recognized.”

Jeff LaScalza, manager of Orange County Honda and sponsor of the annual cleanup, said volunteers like Whyte help keep the recreation areas open.

“I thinks it’s great, otherwise [Imperial Sand Dunes] was running a risk of being closed down or condensed,” LaScalza said. “The Bureau of Land Management and government got tired of cleaning it up.”

Although coordinating this year’s cleanup effort cost Whyte about $1,000 and involved handing out 9,000 fliers during months of preparation, she has little to complain about.

“It doesn’t seem like work to me,” she said. “Talking to these people is energizing.”

Marissa Espino can be reached at (714) 966-5879.