On Oct. 1, the UCA Honors College held the annual Stone Dam Creek Clean up event titled “Don’t Trash Your Planet,” from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The event focuses on cleaning up the park adjacent to Bear Village, an apartment complex inhabited by UCA students.
Senior bio-chemistry major MacKenzie Riegling was one of the hosts of the event.
“It’s almost a traditional event at this point. We do it every year, every semester and it usually has a great turnout,” said Riegling. “This event seems to be slightly different.”
While 29 people signed up for the event only eight showed up.
While small in number, many expressed happiness to be at the event and enjoyed cleaning the park.
“I chose this event because I can directly see my impact when it comes to cleaning up the trash with other people,” said Senior psychology and Spanish major Tamara Bryant. “When you’re directly cleaning up our campus and we’re keeping the campus pretty like how it was when I first got here as a freshman, I feel like that makes me feel connected to the campus and the environment at UCA as a whole.”
This feeling of duty towards the environment could be seen within the participants.
“I volunteered for this event because I felt like it was … a good way to … give back to the community, host like, clean up around the campus or just in the community in general,” said sophomore criminal justice major Chasten Child, “Some people … will … look past the trash. And I was making better of the community by cleaning up and just doing better by our environment.”
Senior exercise science major Collin Joseph — who was another host for the event — said, ”It’s a creek that’s popular around here, and it’s known for people just kind of leaving whatever they want. People come around here, people walk their dogs and stuff, and it’s just not really good to have trash around here.”
While not everywhere, trash could be found in many places throughout the park with a lot of it appearing in or on the side of the creek.
While most of the trash was picked up, there could still be some found throughout these hard to reach parts of the park.
However, the feeling of the park’s beauty could still be found in those who were participating and those who were simply just taking a walk in the park.
“It’s really close to where I live and it’s just easy to … get over her and exercise,” said junior education major Courtney Stevens, who was not attending the event but enjoying the park. “It’s … so pretty … it’s just relaxing on your exercise.”
According to the city of Conway’s website, Stone Dam Creek begins on the UCA college campus where it then flows southeastward until it meets up with Lake Conway.
In May 2021, the overpass on the creek trail was dedicated to Joe White, a former member of the UCA Board of Trustees, who passed away in 2020.
In 2022, the trail was extended as an underpass that went under South Donaghey Avenue was finished, allowing the trail to go all the way to South German Lane.