The Great American Clean Up for Alamogordo

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class John Strong II
  • 49th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ALAMOGORDO, N.M. --  Members of team Holloman and residents of Alamogordo recently came together to help "Keep Alamogordo Beautiful". 

The event was a wide spread clean up of the city's parks, adopted highways, the relief route and other public areas.

The day of cleaning culminated with everyone involved gathering at Washington Park for a celebration of achieving the day's goal, and for the hard work of all the volunteers.

"The purpose of the clean up was to raise awareness on base and in the city of the significant trash problem we have to deal with on a daily basis," said Master Sgt Paul Sanchez, 49th Services Squadron's Honor Guard NCOIC. "This was an extremely successful event as we had more than 200 people participate, and we picked up a couple hundred large bags of trash from through out the city. People have told us they noticed the town is significantly cleaner. It's our hope that our base and town will continue to maintain the cleanliness of the city".

Keep Alamogordo Beautiful is a spin-off of the nationwide program Keep America Beautiful which has been keeping the country clean since 1953. Keep Alamogordo Beautiful became certified as an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, Inc. on Feb. 24, 1998, through the Keep New Mexico Clean and Beautiful program.

According to Keep Alamogordo Beautiful website, Keep Alamogordo Beautiful has been committed "for the last 10 years is to serve the citizens of Alamogordo, by developing and implementing effective public education and community improvement programs which, enhance the quality of life in the community by instilling pride, positive attitude and behavior change regarding natural resource conservation, littering, recycling, proper solid waste management, and beautification".

"In the past seven years, Keep Alamogordo Beautiful has received 27 national and state awards recognizing the program, projects and achievement" said, Mrs. Cindy Pierpont member of the Keep Alamogordo Beautiful Advisory Council and retired United States Air Force Master Sergeant. "The program is great and its success depends on volunteers".

The program focuses on educating the community and primarily aims at the younger members of the community such as the first, third and fifth graders, she said. The Alamogordo Public Schools help reinforce the program.

"The key to the program is really volunteers", Mrs Cindy Pierpont said. "And it's important to take time to improve the environment around you.