Last Saturday, SeeClickFix teamed with the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, the New Haven Parks Department, and other volunteers from around The Elm City to clean up a community eyesore. The Irving Gas station near the corner of Whalley Avenue and West Rock Avenue is nestled between two of New Haven's most prized public spaces - The West River Trail and Edgewood Park. Despite it's beautiful surrounds, the gas station has been severely neglected, with trash and weeds piling up along its shared border with the West River Trail for several years.

Increasingly frustrated with the state of the blighted property, SeeClickFix co-founder and Beaver Hills resident Jeff Blasius helped to spearhead the cleanup. Nearly a year after he posted Issue #46787 - Trash & Weeds - Jeff and nearly 20 other volunteers geared up to address the problem once and for all.

The Japanese Knotweed was taller than the volunteers clearing it!

Armed with pruning shears and some heavy-duty gardening equipment, volunteers cleared the invasive Japanese Knotweed off the West River Trail path and from around the riverbed. Others worked to pick up the years of garbage and broken glass strewn throughout the station grounds. Park Rangers from the New Haven Parks Department hiked up and down the West River next to the property to pull out all of the garbage that had collected there. Needless to say, there was a lot of work to be done and everyone kept busy!

Yes, that is a TV. Yes, we pulled it out of the West River. Yes, it's disgusting.

Within three hours, our teams had filled over 10 reusable dumpsters with weeds, trash and debris. The dumpsters and disposal of everything we cleaned was very generously donated by Westville company BullBag. As you can see below, we definitely needed a pretty big hand getting rid of everything...

Cleanup muscle c/o BullBag

While there is still work to be done at this location, SeeClickFix is proud to have been part of a huge first step towards fixing this problem for good. Our team will be working with WVRA and the New Haven Parks Department on future projects at this location, so check back here frequently for updates on how you can get involved too!

SeeClickFix co-founder Jeff couldn't be happier to see his issue being fixed.