An army of Deer Park High School students, city crewman and community volunteers spent Thursday cleaning up an ever-growing illegal dump site behind DPHS.

The day-long effort was spearheaded by DPHS senior Beth Nicesmith, who made the cleanup her senior project.

Nicesmith said she and Tom Tesch, a member of the high school’s maintenance staff, began mapping out the project at the start of the school year.

 

The first step was to remove the 17 abandon cars from the site that encompasses school district and private property. Even after the cars were hulk slipped and removed earlier this month, another one was abandoned behind the high school last week.

Nicesmith enlisted members of the National Honor Society to help with last week’s cleanup.

Sunshine Recyclers donated two 30-yard dumpsters for the project, but doubled their donation when the first two were quickly filled.

Nicesmith said the most interesting discarded item was a calendar, circa 1940s. There was a multi-item tie for the most disgusting thing discovered by the cleanup crews.

In between those extremes were enough tires to mount on those abandoned cars, furniture, appliances and a variety of cans and bottles from almost every beverage sold in Deer Park.

Tesch said the next step in the project will be to create “No Dumping, No Trespassing” signs to ring the property.

School district officials had talked about gating the entrances on their property, while the city was looking at digging a trench in front of the other entrances to eliminate trespassers in those areas.