Volunteers clean up Bridal Veil Park

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By Jordan Adams

More than 30 volunteers gathered at Bridal Veil Falls on Saturday to assist the Living Planet Aquarium and Provo City in cleaning the surrounding park and walking trail areas.

“I am extremely satisfied, ” said Chris Gourley, volunteer coordinator for Provo City. “The projects that we had planned all got completed so you can’t be much more pleased with that.”

For two hours, volunteers cleaned and painted the barbecues, swept and cleaned all picnic patio areas, removed illegal fire pits, removed trash and debris and completed three tree aprons with new mulch. BYU graduates Daniel De Gaston and B Farris Bush contributed to the efforts and have participated in a number of service projects together.

“You just get a great feeling when [volunteering],” De Gaston said.

Bush, who was visiting from Georgia for the holiday weekend, said, “What’s really cool is to just see so many people get together and do something productive in such a short period of time.”

Emy Dambara and Adrianne Young, the Living Planet Aquarium’s field program coordinators, awarded aquarium passes and small prizes from local sponsors.

“It exceeded my expectations,” Young said. “I was really impressed with all of the young adults who came out because it’s really easy for them to maybe come up with excuses of why not to come but we always enjoy having families and we got a lot more work done than we thought we would.”

Saturday’s project was part of regularly scheduled service projects sponsored by the Living Planet Aquarium, but it was the first one held in Utah County. The culminating project is the participation with the International Coastal Clean-Up efforts. The Living Planet Aquarium is in charge of volunteer efforts in Utah and plans on holding multiple projects statewide in the fall.

“We will be cleaning rivers, lakes and ponds,” Young said. “We will have people that can volunteer on land, in the water scuba diving cleaning in the water and by boat. There are so many ways to help out.”

Any individual or group that is interested in volunteering with the Coastal Clean-Up can email the Living Planet Aquarium at .

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