There is a great egret — a tall, white bird — that frequents Hayes Lake beside the Centralia outlet mall, the Skookumchuck River and Interstate 5.
This week, for the first time in a long time, Hayes and its neighbor, Plummer Lake, are as pristine as the egret’s feathers.
Thanks to a joint project by the City of Centralia and Lewis County Solid Waste Utilities, the two bodies of water got a makeover last week.
Several truckloads of garbage that had accumulated over several years, according to Centralia Public Works Director Kim Ashmore, were hauled out from the lakeshores over the final weeks of December.
Lewis County Solid Waste, Ashmore said, had put out a call to local municipalities seeking a project to use the remainder of a grant that would expire at the end of the year.
Ashmore thinks his lake cleanup idea was the only project that was proposed.
“Maybe homeless camps, things that get washed down during floods. … We went and looked at it and there was a lot of garbage left over probably years of accumulation,” Ashmore said.
Because the lakes are state property, cleanup crews needed Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife permission to complete the project, which Ashmore said they swiftly obtained.
“It’s amazing what they’ve done down there,” he said. “They’re taking a dump trailer every day to the landfill.”
