RANKIN COUNTY, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
People who use the Pearl River sandbars above the Barnett Reservoir picked up their trash this past weekend and drew praise from Reservoir Manager John Sigman.
As WLBT told you last week, Sigman threatened to close the sandbars down, if people didn't stop littering and ordered the trash barrels removed.
The Flag Island sandbar in Rankin County was littered with bottles, cans and trash on the Tuesday after the Fourth of July weekend.
Trash barrels were overflowing.
This past weekend Reservoir Manager John Sigman decided to remove the trash barrels and see what would happen.
The result is much to the surprise of just about everybody.
Sigman congratulated sand bar users on their improvement and backed away from a threat to close the sandbars down, for the rest of the season.
"Well I can say this morning we have as little trash as we have had in recent history," said John Sigman, Reservoir Manager. "I want to thank all of the the people that contributed to that, all the people that worked to carry the trash back, to dumpsters provided for that. Based on the performance this weekend, by the users, I think shutting down the river is on the back burner, for now."
Regular sand bar users, like 48 year old David Graham, a barber from Forest, gets the message and hopes every body will continue to do what was done this past weekend.
"I think we have go to keep doing this, if they want to keep enjoying this," David Graham said. "I know it's hard but you have just got to do it, to keep this available for us."
To the amazement of many people who have spent a lot of time at the sandbars is that the experiment worked, and removing the barrels made people use garbage bags and put their trash back on their boats for transport down river and has for the moment at least caused the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District to back away from it's threat to close the sandbars.
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