Spring cleaning means work for Moses Lake’s wood chipper
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 9 months AGO
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Moses Lake municipal parks and recreation employees Manuel De La Torre, foreground, and Tom Moschner, background, feed the wood chipper Monday morning.
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | April 20, 2020 11:44 PM
MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake residents took advantage of a city offer to help with spring cleaning and dropped off more than 100 pickup loads of branch and tree trimmings, dead branches and other yard debris last week. City employees finished the job Monday morning by feeding the branches and sticks into the city’s wood chipper.
A drop-off zone was designated in the middle of the parking lot at the Paul Lauzier Athletic Complex on Central Drive, and city residents left a lot of tree limbs and branches trimmed from bushes.
“But if you picture the whole city of Moses Lake, this isn’t bad,” Tom Moschner said of the mounded branches. Moschner works for the parks and recreation department and was part of the crew running the chipper.
Moschner said he was impressed that Moses Lake residents did as they were asked and avoided dumping things like leaves and grass clippings.
“It’s just the stuff that was requested,” he said.
The yard debris removal and chipping program is an annual event. Normally, city crews travel around to neighborhoods to pick up yard debris, but the procedure was changed for 2020 in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.
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