MOUNT VERNON – Mount Vernon and Knox County participated in Trail-a-Palooza on Saturday, a celebration of the completion of the Ohio to Erie Trail.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Clean Ohio Trails Fund paid for the completion of the last remaining section of the Ohio to Erie Trail in Knox County, now linking Delaware, Licking and Knox counties.
The CA&C Visitors Center hosted the event in Knox County.
“The purpose of the event is to celebrate the last section of Ohio to Erie Trail being completed,” Safety Service Director Rick Dzik told the Mount Vernon News.
That last section of trail was in Licking County, but Knox participated in recognizing the achievement, he said. The trail flows through the county and the city.
Friends of the Trail that sponsored the event included the city, Experience Mount Vernon, Heart of Ohio Trail, Kokosing Gap Trail, Knox County Convention and Visitors Bureau and Knox County Park District.
Storm cleanup continues
The Public Works Department spent most of last week continuing to pick up and clean up storm debris, Dzik said. The crews had to wait to clean debris that had been caught up in power lines until power company employees made it safe.
Unlike the week of the storm, city employees didn’t need to work overtime.
“They were able to free up some crews to get back to grading our gravel alleys and using the arm mower to mow along the roadways,” he said. “So we are getting back to normal business around here.”
Street Department picks up limbs
The Street Department will, on request, come out and pick up limbs from the storm, Dzik said. Residents can call 740-393-9501 to have a crew come out.
“I do want to put a caveat on that. They will only pick up small limbs and that kind of stuff. Larger branches and full trees are not something that they're going to be picking up,” he said.
Parks Department installs temporary dugout
The storm destroyed one of the concrete dugouts at the Babe Ruth field at Memorial Park.
The Parks Department was able to set up a temporary dugout so the league can continue its season. The city will look for a permanent solution after ball seasons end, he said.
Utility crews move lime sludge
The lime lagoon cleaning project is going smoothly, Dzik said.
“They started hauling the lime out of the lagoon this week,” he said, “[We] started working with some local farmers and such to see if they wanted to do pickups while they were picking it up.”
The state Environmental Protection Agency inspected the site on Thursday and reported that the project was being executed according to the permit issued by the agency.
The city did get reports from residents in several houses along the road between the garage where they are loading the sludge and where they are dropping it off that a lot of dust was coming up. Utility crews will be sweeping the road twice a day to keep that dust down and keep the road clean, he said.
Generators operate utility needs during outages
The Utility Department was kept busy during storm recovery efforts, he said. They worked around the clock during power outages to keep the sewer lift stations and water booster stations running. That required going around to each location and hooking up a generator to get some water or wastewater pumped, and then moving on to the next station until the power was back on.
Everything was back to normal operations last week, Dzik said.
