Free & clean
Teen crew takes on beach cleanup
Each morning, the bright yellow safety vests come out, and a teenaged trash crew head out from the City Garage to clean three city beaches.
The program began about 20 years ago, initially as a state-funded program that employed area teenagers to pick up trash. While successful, the funding ended, and the program was inherited by the Department of Public Works. Rick Crenca, the director of Public Works for Warwick said the program has been successful in providing minimum wage jobs for young teenagers and in creating cleaner beaches and play areas for Warwick residents. The minimum wage in Rhode Island was changed to $10.10 per hour in January 1st of this year, making the pay for the morning job very appealing to this young group of teenagers.
Dave Barber Jr. is the full time city employee in charge of overseeing the program. He’s in charge of moving the workers from place to place, usually via a retro fitted bus belonging to the fire department.
He said “they’re all good kids,” and his focus is making sure they’re hydrated and ready to go throughout the morning, as the temperatures heat up.
The job is seasonal, with the date of employment starting and ending based on the public school schedule. Each morning the crew moves between City Park, Oakland Beach and Conimicut Point, seeing plenty of fish, crabs, and interesting trash as they go.
Nick Badway, a student at Toll Gate High School has seen it all in his first week of trash picking, from dead fluke to used diapers to more cigarette butts then he can count. He said Oakland Beach is the dirtiest on most days.
Beach patron Janice Simonelle of Cranston approves of the crew. She arrives at City Park promptly at 10 a.m., seven days a week, enjoying the beach and the work of the trash pickers.
“It’s the cleanest, nicest beach in the area,” she says, “My children grew up here, and it’s such a great place to be.”
Simonelle also expressed her gratefulness in the doing away with the “beach fee” system to have been implemented this summer. In early May, Mayor Joe Solomon announced he would suspend the beach fees approved by the City Council and former Mayor Scott Avedisian. Solomon pledged to keep the beaches clean this summer, and Simonelle feels that through this trash pick up crew, he is accomplishing that goal.
She does, however, agree with Badway, saying Oakland Beach remains the worst of all, but that is the fault of the beachgoers there, not the trash crew.
Regardless of the amount of trash, the job is still sought after.
It’s the hours and the locations that really draw people, explains Toll Gate student Alex Gaspar. Gaspar says by working from 7 to 11 a.m., he still has plenty of time to do other activities with his afternoon. Additionally, he says, “I didn’t really know anyone coming in, but everyone is relatively friendly, and it’s easy to get to know people.”
All of the workers agree it’s not a bad way to spend the morning.
Mattie Fontaine, also a Toll Gate student, said that although she’s happy to clean up the beach, she questions why others can’t seem to do it themselves.
“It’s so easy to want to come here and keep it clean. It’s even better to clean up and get paid a bit for it as well,” she said. Serena Cook, also a member of the crew, agrees. She says the hours are great, she has weekends off, and, as a consistent visitor at Oakland Beach, she is more than willing to do the job. She said, “I’m basically getting paid to walk around and do what every person has moral obligation to do, clean up after themselves while visiting the beach.”
