Success Stories About
Volunteers
The Scramble to Stay Dry Doesn’t
Diminish Volunteers’ Enthusiasm
Story by: Emily Tennill
Volunteer Coordinator, Lewisville Lake
When water levels begin to rise at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
flood-control lakes, staff members get moving. They hustle to move campers,
cancel reservations, turn off electricity, and close gates. During the
flooding this past June and July at Lewisville Lake, one group of Corps team
members in particular had to move it or lose it – literally. To avoid being
trapped in the parks, a group of 12 volunteer park hosts had to cancel
Independence Day festivities with their families and pack up their entire
house to move nearly 50 miles to Lavon Lake. But despite the hardship, the
volunteers are back and already working to put the parks back in order.
Normally, the hosts reside in the parks to help greet park visitors and
perform maintenance tasks. After helping to move out hundreds of campers at
the end of June due to rising lake levels, the volunteers anxiously watched
as the rain continued to fall. As the lake steadily swallowed Oakland Park,
the four hosts stationed there had to be moved to Hickory Creek Park. The
rain wouldn’t let up and finally, it became obvious that the only remaining
high and dry sites in Hickory Creek would soon be cut-off at a low spot in
the road.
Park rangers at Lewisville Lake quickly communicated their need for some
emergency campsites to rangers Eric Pedersen and Paula Bennett at Lavon
Lake. Without hesitation, Pedersen and Bennett responded by holding sites
for the displaced volunteers despite the busy holiday week. Park Host Mary
Friske could only shrug her shoulders over the move, “It’s really
inconvenient, but what can you do? You can’t stop the rain and the lake’s
supposed to fill up.” On the Fourth of July, with efficiency learned from
years of full-time RVing, the hosts headed to Lavon without a single
complaint.
On July 7, Lewisville Lake reached 534.03 feet above mean sea level, just
2.97 feet from the top of the 100 year flood pool. “Oakland and Westlake
Parks [where 4 of the Park Hosts work] just looked like part of the lake,”
said Tim MacAllister, Lewisville Lake’s site manager. “The lowest spot in
the main road going into Hickory Creek Park [where 8 Park Hosts contribute
their time] was almost completely covered.”
Though the volunteers were grateful for the dry sites, after a week at Lavon
they were eager to get “home”. But their return to Hickory Creek brought
with it new challenges. The generous rainfall had resulted in grass up to
four feet high in some areas. Trash, leaves and logs covered the roads, open
areas and campsites that had been under up to three feet of water. Beavers
had gnawed on the trees that were now standing in the lake and fire ants
thrived in the wet conditions. But the volunteers were undaunted.
Mowers and weed eaters quickly roared to life. The hosts shoveled untold
pounds of sticks and leaves as the water levels ebbed off the roadways. They
even worked together to pull most of heavy logs into piles for later
disposal. “It’s a lot of work. We go out in the morning while it’s cool and
then again for a little while in the evening. Cutting that high grass takes
a long time,” explained weary Park Host Garry Howell.
The volunteers’ early clean-up efforts will save the project thousands of
dollars in clean-up costs since the tasks would normally be done by a
contractor. The hosts have already contributed over 400 hours of service
time in the latter half of the month of July with a value of $7,508.00 to
the government. Mr. MacAllister expressed the feelings of the rest of the
project staff, “We’ve all been really impressed and grateful for the
volunteers’ hard work. They’ve worked extremely hard and you can tell they
take pride in how the parks look.”
And the work continues; Westlake, Oakland and several other parks are also
still in need of extensive clean-up work. Park Hosts Owen and Lynne
Richards, avid geocachers, approached the project’s volunteer coordinator
with an idea for a group clean-up event in Westlake Park with other local
geocachers. (Geocaching is a hide-and-seek challenge in which participants
hide a small item, or “cache”, anywhere in the world and then post the GPS
coordinates of the cache on the internet. Others use the posted coordinates
to find the cache.) The Richards independently planned the entire “Cache
In-Trash Out” event with minimal help from the project staff. The event will
take place next month and dozens of geocachers are expected to contribute
their time.
“We’ll get there,” Mr. Richards declared assuredly. “The parks will be
looking great when the visitors come back.”
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