Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 19, 1991 TAG: 9104190156
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A pickup truck loaded with rubbish strained up the steep dirt road, and the driver came face to face with Caldwell.
He didn't pause, just drove on down the other side of the mountain - an equally treacherous path passing from southeast Roanoke County into Franklin County.
There was rich irony in Caldwell's brief encounter.
For the rest of the day, Caldwell ran a heavy crane, lifting garbage off a steep mountain slope and dropping it into dumpsters. He wasn't alone. Thirty or so men worked alongside him, in and out of bulldozers, trucks and front-end loaders.
They scrambled on the steep and remote hillside, hooking cables to the carcasses of refrigerators and couches, pallets, a pickup truck cab, auto gas tanks, engine blocks, water heaters, bicycles, furnaces, a toilet bowl, a large plastic shark and one live and unhappy snake.
The desolate area, complete with a spectacular sweeping vista of the Roanoke Valley on one side of the hill and Smith Mountain Lake on the other, is a graveyard for oversized trash.
Illegal dumpers know Crowell Gap Road, and they employ it liberally. They have for years, decades maybe.
"That guy this morning, he was going to dump that stuff," said Caldwell. "When he saw me there, he just kept going."
In January, I stumbled across the place while looking for other things. I was so revulsed - as were Billy Branch, who owns the land, and all the neighbors down the hill - that I wrote of the indignity of the human bacteria who foul our mountains. I expected to hear no more about it.
You can't hear people thinking.
The silence burst, big-time, on Thursday.
George David, who insisted he's a normal guy, showed his wizardry with a bulldozer. He plied a hillside too steep to walk, much less travel in a 'dozer, pushed trash into piles and hauled tires up the hill.
Mike Fraley, like David a Branch Highways employee, ran the show.
Branch Highways had a crew of men, a crane and a bulldozer.
Carter Machinery Co. from Salem had men and machines.
Lanford Brothers Co. and James River Equipment pitched in.
Cycle Systems contributed the dumpsters, and hauled them to the Roanoke Regional Landfill - where the garbage was dumped for free. It'll go to Franklin County's landfill for free on Sunday.
The laborers? Inmates from the Franklin County Jail. Ten worked on Thursday; 18 are expected today.
Churchill's portable toilets contributed two you-know-whats.
Burger King provided lunch; Pizza Hut picks up that job tomorrow.
Roanoke County will pay to dispose of the hundreds of tires being dragged from the bramble.
The Clean Valley Council helped pull much of it together.
The Virginia Transportation Department closed the road and will supply the stone to fix the road once the heavy machines leave.
When the job is done on Sunday - weather permitting - about $100,000 worth of muscle, machine and material will have been contributed.
A mountainside will be cleaned.
And then we'll have to come up with a way to keep it that way.
For now, though, savor the moment.
You share a community with the people, the businesses and the organizations listed above.
You ought to be proud.
by CNB