LDS youth volunteers, leaders tackle massive cleanup

On Saturday, 175 youth volunteers and 40 youth leaders gathered at a farm just west of Cobblestone Farms to clean up Maricopa and take initial steps to provide thousands of pounds of food to needy families in the community.

Used as a dumpsite for the past 30 to 40 years, the land adjacent to the Skousen farm is riddled with decades-old trash deposits that have piled up and become buried beneath the sand. But a group of volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helped clean up the garbage, trying to bring the land back to its natural condition.

“It’s a service project to pick up all of the metal, glass and other trash,” said Mitchell Allen, 16, volunteer and student at Maricopa High School. “All of us kids came out to pick up all of this trash, but we still have a lot to do.”

The group hopes to clear out as much of the piled-up waste between the farm and State Route 238 as possible. But after years of dumping and the Southern Arizona winds covering the trash beneath it’s sand, the task was larger than expected.

“The more we pick up, the more we find,” said Ryan Goettl, church youth leader. “It’s been an old garbage dump for who knows how many years now. We have the kids from Maricopa’s Latter-day Saints churches out here and kids from Ajo’s church, too. We’re going to clean up as much as we can, but it is really great to get out in the sun and help out,” he added.

Troy Skousen, who owns the land, makes a living farming directly to the east of the old landfill, growing alfalfa, corn and cotton. His family has owned the farm for more than 60 years. He was as active as anyone Saturday clearing his property of debris.

“I’d guess that today we are going to collect 6,000 pounds of garbage,” Skousen said.

For the last seven years, Skousen, a member of the church, has used an acre of his own land to grow food given to the local food bank in the late spring and summer. Though the plot is not yet ready for harvesting, the group still sent a small team out to the plot to do some weeding.

“The community plot is about an acre and we grow tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, cantaloupe and corn,” he said. “We will start harvesting in May and go through July.”

Last year that community garden produced 6,000 pounds of produce and in its biggest year, more than 14,000 pounds of food was given to those in need.

Church members, who try to coordinate three or four massive events like Saturday’s a year, said they felt good with the amount of trash they were able to clear from the land.

Youth leader Brian Hoffman, 39, said, “It’s great to see all the youth out here getting to work.”