Volunteers from Northern Oyster Co. load up heavy construction waste that somebody dumped on the beach.

Project Homeless Connect 2016 was a great success providing 116 members of our community with a wide range of services such as housing assistance, dental services, eye-exams, eye glasses, haircuts, ID cards, veterinary checks, and many other useful community services, referrals and information. Thank you for over 70 volunteers and 26 local agencies, organizations, and businesses that worked together to insure our guests accessed the services they needed.

A special thanks to the team that put this all together: Nicole Lopez (PPR AmeriCorps), Carly Castaneda (Publicity), Darice Grass (Meals), Vinessa Karnofski and Faye Kerms, (Tangible Goods), Fr. Richard Loop, Nancy Holmes, and Jerry Sadler (Logistics), Katie Lindstrom, Shenna Humphreys (Providers) and Mitzi Pothier (Volunteer Coordinator).

Bill Buck, PHC Coordinator 2016

Ocean Park

The South Pacific County Humane Society is extremely grateful to the Loren H. Corder Foundation for their generous donation. The Foundation’s support has not only supported providing shelter, food, and care for the stray cats and dogs in our area but also important maintenance and improvements to our facility. Their donations over the years have been essential to our ongoing success in support of our mission to protect animals that are unable to speak for themselves.

Thank you again.

South Pacific County Humane Society Staff, Volunteers,

Board Members and the Shelter Cats and Dogs

The first Community Beach Cleanup of the year was another success! What a great way to kick off 2016! Our volunteer count was up to more than 350 from just 250 the year before and we removed 6 tons of debris off our beaches! A huge thanks to all who pitched in!

Our next organized cleanup is April 23. Many thanks go to Marine Resources for the funding for this cleanup. After that will be the July 5 cleanup, which still needs funds for the dumpsters (approx $6,000) so if you know of anyone who would like to contribute, please send them our way.

This marked our 42nd cleanup. Fourteen years have flown by and over 300 tons of garbage has been removed from our beaches! Now, that is something to celebrate!

We can never offer enough thanks to those several businesses and organizations that contribute to our cleanups on a regular basis: Okie’s Thriftway Market, Jack’s Country Store, Long Beach Coffee Roasters, Great Day Café. As always, special thanks to the Chinook Observer for helping to spread the word with announcements and articles, and to the Ohana Media Group and KMUN for their radio announcements that reach so many. An extra-special thanks to those businesses who advertised the cleanup in print, on their reader boards, or displayed our banners: Chinook Observer, Bank of the Pacific, Raymond Federal Credit Union, Box K Auto, BeachDog, Sid’s, Pioneer Market, Peninsula Sr. Activity Center, Taft Plumbing — thank you everyone! This advertising is so crucial to our success.

Our very special thanks to the Truck Brigade, our Adopt-A-Beach Groups and Approach Coordinators — thank you for your ongoing commitment, enthusiasm and caring. So many new folks jumped in to help, you all rocked it! The groups included the daily north-end crew, Surfside HOA, Ocean Park Neighbors, Life’s a

Beach, Grovers, Aubrey Freemantle, Ted Magnuson, Schroeders & Lorentes, Friends of WNWR, Marcia Romito, Long Beach Pack 29 Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts Troop 28, Lesley Ferguson’s Good Earth Gardening, The Breakers, Peninsula Rotary, Ilwaco High School. Our approach coordinators included: Kathleen Sayce, Gloria and Jim Buck, The Horlachers, Vicki Vanneman, Magen Michaud, Kelly Rupp & Bev Arnoldy, Lynn Raymer and Susie Dawson. The trucks this cleanup were driven by Scott Cook & Bethany George, Houstys, Russ Lewis, Nick Michaud, Reinkes and Dave Stephenson. The ham operators were: Bob Cline, Ed Archer, Dan Dimick, Georgia Mourikis, Steve Linhart, Michael Carmel, Frank Wolfe, Steve Fiala, Jim King, Martin Halvorsen and John Williams. A special thanks to Jaysen of Northern Oyster Company along with his coworkers Anthony, Jose and Biande for helping to get things off the beach no one else could and to Naselle Youth Camp for coming out to help too!

The beach clean up soup feed was as wonderful as ever. Everyone enjoyed warming up with delicious pea soup, chili and clam chowder after all their hard work. We so appreciate the talent of our soup-crafters Susan Clark, Steve Pollock and Gayle Borchard. Many thanks to Gayle for organizing the soup feed event, the Shoalwater Birders for helping her, and Rita Nicely, too, as well as our thanks to the Peninsula Senior Activity Center for sharing their warm and comfortable space and for their support!

My apologies to those I’ve missed.

The GrassRoots Garbage Gang is a 501c3 not-for-profit group that cleans up the Peninsula beaches in South Pacific County. For more information visit www.ourbeach.org

Shelly Pollock, Shelly@NWIFservices.com, 642-0033

Beach Cleanup organizer and very proud member of this community!