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Gun-owning environmental crusader calls shooters a
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Man on a county cleanup mission
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
NORTH BEND -- The sun is still rising over the Cascades, but Wade Holden has already declared high noon on illegal dumpers.
Riding into the hills in a specially rigged truck, a "No Litter" sign on the back, he bounces along a craggy former logging road, stopping suddenly after spotting an empty car flipped over down a hill, obscured by rising dust, alder and blackberry bushes.
Kyle Bishop, left, Theona Reynen and Michael Kopson, working for Wade Holden's Friends of the Trails, load a dumped couch onto a truck outside Snoqualmie Point Park. Meryl Schenker / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
"Man. Brand new," Holden says, shaking his head. "Still has its license plates on it."
Nearby, he finds a red Suzuki, framed by buttercups and riddled with bullet holes like Bonnie and Clyde's getaway car. The roof is gone, leaving plenty of room for Styrofoam chunks, dirty rags and discarded carpeting.
"I have a sixth sense for garbage," Holden says. "I don't want to brag, but it takes a different breed."
Indeed.
Holden, 43, is to trash heaps on public land what Elliott Ness was to rumrunning.
For six years, he's taken on a job that nobody wants to do but everyone wants done: He rids King County of debris dumped in or along its forests, lakes, trails and rivers.
He figures he hauls 600 tons of trash a year off public lands -- and knows that he and his crews don't find it all.
But it's not for lack of trying.
With a modest county hauling contract and an enormous sense of mission, he wields machetes, plunges waist-deep into stinging nettles, calls in National Guard helicopters, and deploys skin divers or his own wrecking truck.
Holden has discovered meth labs, paint barrels and diapers by stream beds; he's hauled out refrigerators, cars and mattresses from ravines; and he's found computers, televisions and even dead puppies used for target practice in the woods.
Once, he helped stop a man trying to commit suicide, truck running, hose linking cab to exhaust pipe.
"When I get up in the morning," he says, "I never know what I'm going to run across."
Part detective, part Hercules
Wade Holden clears brush for his team to pick up garbage. Appalled by dumping in the outdoors, he decided to do something about it. Meryl Schenker / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
Holden never thought he'd be in the garbage business.
He grew up on a Texas ranch but was turned off by his father's "development deals."
So in 1992, he moved from Texas to North Bend seeking mountains.
His epiphany came one day when he, his wife, Tania, and their llamas went exploring in the Snoqualmie River valley.
"Here was this gorgeous valley, this beautiful old-growth cedar, and it was chest high in garbage," Holden recalls. "I was tired and wanted to camp out, but Tania refused; it was just disgusting."
Since then, Holden has become part detective, part Hercules, part social observer, part Indiana Jones.
For four straight years, Holden voluntarily helped clean up the Middle Fork valley, along with another determined resident, Mark Boyar. But the more trash he found, the testier Holden became; he dropped his full-time job as a fencing contractor and turned to wilderness cleanup.
"We came 2,300 miles from Texas to be near mountains," Holden said. "We didn't just throw a dart on a map. But I'd never seen such appalling, stupid, careless behavior."
He and Tania formed a non-profit cleanup group, Friends of the Trails. Tania began applying for grants; he became more familiar with bureaucracy and visits Olympia frequently to lobby lawmakers.
The two have pieced together enough money to buy their own wrecking truck, and Holden proudly displays logos of sponsors: Mountains to Sound Greenway, Rural Community Partnership Grant, Rotary International, Earth Share of Washington.
Two years ago, King County signed Holden to a two-year contract worth $36,850. The money is a pass-through from the state's litter tax to the county.
"Without Wade, we wouldn't be addressing the gaps as well as we do," says Polly Young, a project manager within the solid waste division of the county's Department of Natural Resources and Parks.
Adds Larry Phillips, a county councilman: "Wade is a throwback to my parents' generation in the best sense; he would rather go out and get the job done than sit around and complain.
"He is basically stewarding public lands at his private expense, out there every week cleaning up the public's mess."
Kyle Bishop collects garbage at an illegal target-practice site in the North Bend area. The cleanup also spotlights gun use on public lands. Meryl Schenker / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
'Trash attracts trash'
Patrick Brady, a Seattle attorney who lives near the Seola Beach Watershed, first met Holden last month, when he called the county to report illegal dumping of yard waste.
Holden and his crew found mounds of discarded grass clippings, brought in a "chipper" to grind down tossed Christmas trees, and then thrashed their way out of the steep-sloped watershed with 35 tires, four bicycles, a barbecue grill and large electrical power equipment.
"Wade and his crew were like the cavalry coming to the rescue for me," Brady says.
"Neighbors told me people had been dumping stuff for 20 years. ... I decided not to ignore it."
During a recent jaunt, Holden shouts to his three-teen crew above the rush of roaring water from the nearby Snoqualmie River.
"Y'all need some gloves," Holden says. "If you find syringes, let me know."
The youths, two of whom had been sentenced to community service for minor juvenile offenses, mutter disapprovingly as they each fill a garbage bag.
The third youth, 18-year-old Michael Kopson, who joined the group as a volunteer, eyes smashed stereo speakers and the circuit-board remains of a shot-up television set, and says, "I knew people dumped things, but not like this."
Cleve Pinnix, director for the state Parks and Recreation Commission, says Holden's work has flagged not only the enormity of illegal dumping, but also the issue of shooting guns on public lands.
On a recent trek up a logging road off Interstate 90's Exit 38 that is now part of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, Holden's crew finds a shot-up gate post, campfire pits with broken glass and hundreds of shiny brass rifle cartridges.
Kopson and another crew member, Theona Reynen, 16, both went to school with Chris Brilz, the Issaquah High student body president who was struck by a stray bullet April 18 while driving home along I-90.
Brilz is still recovering from his injuries.
In the meantime, Holden is continuing his one-man crusade.
A gun owner himself, he is trying to persuade shooters as well as recreationists, contractors, home remodelers and other "problem groups" to stop trashing the landscape.
He has knocked on unsuspecting folks' doors, asking them to cease and desist dumping.
He gets their addresses from their own junk; as Phillips points out, "he's not invading anybody's privacy by looking at it -- they illegally dump and leave a trail of evidence."
His zeal, on occasion, has caused problems.
He and a former landlord are in litigation over back rent, which Holden claims stems from turning in the landlord for illegal dumping. His landlord could not be reached.
But even though the cleanup effort sometimes feels like shoveling snow in an avalanche, Holden is undeterred.
"The whole bottom line is that trash attracts more trash," Holden says. "It's all about maintenance."
Reynen, one of the teenage crew members, nods in agreement.
"That's true! Seriously, if my room's messy, I think, why clean it? And it gets worse."
Holden smiles.
"We do a lot more than pick up trash," he says. "Seek and ye shall find."
CONTACT US
We'd like to hear from you.
What's the most alarming illegal dumpsite in your community? Where's the largest pile of old tires, refrigerators and sofas? And what have you done to try to get someone to clean up the mess?
E-mail us at pitrash@seattlepi.com, and please include a name and telephone number so we can reach you.
Fines for dumping trash can run from $95 (fast-food wrapper) to $171 (glass bottle), $950 (a lighted cigarette), and $1,000 to $5,000 plus jail time for other items, such as appliances and tires.
To report illegal dumping or for more information, the state hotline at 1-866-548-8371, or contact:
KING COUNTY
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/78694_clean16.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
NORTH BEND -- The sun is still rising over the Cascades, but Wade Holden has already declared high noon on illegal dumpers.
Riding into the hills in a specially rigged truck, a "No Litter" sign on the back, he bounces along a craggy former logging road, stopping suddenly after spotting an empty car flipped over down a hill, obscured by rising dust, alder and blackberry bushes.
Kyle Bishop, left, Theona Reynen and Michael Kopson, working for Wade Holden's Friends of the Trails, load a dumped couch onto a truck outside Snoqualmie Point Park. Meryl Schenker / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
"Man. Brand new," Holden says, shaking his head. "Still has its license plates on it."
Nearby, he finds a red Suzuki, framed by buttercups and riddled with bullet holes like Bonnie and Clyde's getaway car. The roof is gone, leaving plenty of room for Styrofoam chunks, dirty rags and discarded carpeting.
"I have a sixth sense for garbage," Holden says. "I don't want to brag, but it takes a different breed."
Indeed.
Holden, 43, is to trash heaps on public land what Elliott Ness was to rumrunning.
For six years, he's taken on a job that nobody wants to do but everyone wants done: He rids King County of debris dumped in or along its forests, lakes, trails and rivers.
He figures he hauls 600 tons of trash a year off public lands -- and knows that he and his crews don't find it all.
But it's not for lack of trying.
With a modest county hauling contract and an enormous sense of mission, he wields machetes, plunges waist-deep into stinging nettles, calls in National Guard helicopters, and deploys skin divers or his own wrecking truck.
Holden has discovered meth labs, paint barrels and diapers by stream beds; he's hauled out refrigerators, cars and mattresses from ravines; and he's found computers, televisions and even dead puppies used for target practice in the woods.
Once, he helped stop a man trying to commit suicide, truck running, hose linking cab to exhaust pipe.
"When I get up in the morning," he says, "I never know what I'm going to run across."
Part detective, part Hercules
Wade Holden clears brush for his team to pick up garbage. Appalled by dumping in the outdoors, he decided to do something about it. Meryl Schenker / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
Holden never thought he'd be in the garbage business.
He grew up on a Texas ranch but was turned off by his father's "development deals."
So in 1992, he moved from Texas to North Bend seeking mountains.
His epiphany came one day when he, his wife, Tania, and their llamas went exploring in the Snoqualmie River valley.
"Here was this gorgeous valley, this beautiful old-growth cedar, and it was chest high in garbage," Holden recalls. "I was tired and wanted to camp out, but Tania refused; it was just disgusting."
Since then, Holden has become part detective, part Hercules, part social observer, part Indiana Jones.
For four straight years, Holden voluntarily helped clean up the Middle Fork valley, along with another determined resident, Mark Boyar. But the more trash he found, the testier Holden became; he dropped his full-time job as a fencing contractor and turned to wilderness cleanup.
"We came 2,300 miles from Texas to be near mountains," Holden said. "We didn't just throw a dart on a map. But I'd never seen such appalling, stupid, careless behavior."
He and Tania formed a non-profit cleanup group, Friends of the Trails. Tania began applying for grants; he became more familiar with bureaucracy and visits Olympia frequently to lobby lawmakers.
The two have pieced together enough money to buy their own wrecking truck, and Holden proudly displays logos of sponsors: Mountains to Sound Greenway, Rural Community Partnership Grant, Rotary International, Earth Share of Washington.
Two years ago, King County signed Holden to a two-year contract worth $36,850. The money is a pass-through from the state's litter tax to the county.
"Without Wade, we wouldn't be addressing the gaps as well as we do," says Polly Young, a project manager within the solid waste division of the county's Department of Natural Resources and Parks.
Adds Larry Phillips, a county councilman: "Wade is a throwback to my parents' generation in the best sense; he would rather go out and get the job done than sit around and complain.
"He is basically stewarding public lands at his private expense, out there every week cleaning up the public's mess."
Kyle Bishop collects garbage at an illegal target-practice site in the North Bend area. The cleanup also spotlights gun use on public lands. Meryl Schenker / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
'Trash attracts trash'
Patrick Brady, a Seattle attorney who lives near the Seola Beach Watershed, first met Holden last month, when he called the county to report illegal dumping of yard waste.
Holden and his crew found mounds of discarded grass clippings, brought in a "chipper" to grind down tossed Christmas trees, and then thrashed their way out of the steep-sloped watershed with 35 tires, four bicycles, a barbecue grill and large electrical power equipment.
"Wade and his crew were like the cavalry coming to the rescue for me," Brady says.
"Neighbors told me people had been dumping stuff for 20 years. ... I decided not to ignore it."
During a recent jaunt, Holden shouts to his three-teen crew above the rush of roaring water from the nearby Snoqualmie River.
"Y'all need some gloves," Holden says. "If you find syringes, let me know."
The youths, two of whom had been sentenced to community service for minor juvenile offenses, mutter disapprovingly as they each fill a garbage bag.
The third youth, 18-year-old Michael Kopson, who joined the group as a volunteer, eyes smashed stereo speakers and the circuit-board remains of a shot-up television set, and says, "I knew people dumped things, but not like this."
Cleve Pinnix, director for the state Parks and Recreation Commission, says Holden's work has flagged not only the enormity of illegal dumping, but also the issue of shooting guns on public lands.
On a recent trek up a logging road off Interstate 90's Exit 38 that is now part of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, Holden's crew finds a shot-up gate post, campfire pits with broken glass and hundreds of shiny brass rifle cartridges.
Kopson and another crew member, Theona Reynen, 16, both went to school with Chris Brilz, the Issaquah High student body president who was struck by a stray bullet April 18 while driving home along I-90.
Brilz is still recovering from his injuries.
In the meantime, Holden is continuing his one-man crusade.
A gun owner himself, he is trying to persuade shooters as well as recreationists, contractors, home remodelers and other "problem groups" to stop trashing the landscape.
He has knocked on unsuspecting folks' doors, asking them to cease and desist dumping.
He gets their addresses from their own junk; as Phillips points out, "he's not invading anybody's privacy by looking at it -- they illegally dump and leave a trail of evidence."
His zeal, on occasion, has caused problems.
He and a former landlord are in litigation over back rent, which Holden claims stems from turning in the landlord for illegal dumping. His landlord could not be reached.
But even though the cleanup effort sometimes feels like shoveling snow in an avalanche, Holden is undeterred.
"The whole bottom line is that trash attracts more trash," Holden says. "It's all about maintenance."
Reynen, one of the teenage crew members, nods in agreement.
"That's true! Seriously, if my room's messy, I think, why clean it? And it gets worse."
Holden smiles.
"We do a lot more than pick up trash," he says. "Seek and ye shall find."
CONTACT US
We'd like to hear from you.
What's the most alarming illegal dumpsite in your community? Where's the largest pile of old tires, refrigerators and sofas? And what have you done to try to get someone to clean up the mess?
E-mail us at pitrash@seattlepi.com, and please include a name and telephone number so we can reach you.
Fines for dumping trash can run from $95 (fast-food wrapper) to $171 (glass bottle), $950 (a lighted cigarette), and $1,000 to $5,000 plus jail time for other items, such as appliances and tires.
To report illegal dumping or for more information, the state hotline at 1-866-548-8371, or contact:
KING COUNTY
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/78694_clean16.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878