Volunteers give Portage’s Prairie Duneland Trail foliage a trim

Workers from Thieneman Construction and Commonwealth Engineers took a break Friday from working on projects at Portage’s wastewater treatment plant to attack overgrown vegetation along the Prairie Duneland Trail.

“It was a little daunting,” said Mark Hall, north office area manager with Thieneman, when he and Park Superintendent Kelly Smith drove down the trail a month ago to gauge the scope of the work.

But about 50 volunteers tackled the project, trimming branches along about two miles of the trail.

“One of the guys brought a battery-powered chainsaw” and several batteries to swap out during the day, Hall said. He used a gas-powered hedge trimmer on smaller branches while Andrew Kreps used a gas-powered pole saw.

Hall’s son, Matt Hall, drove a skid steer to gather branches so they could be loaded into a dump truck to be hauled away. “At one time, we had three or four dump trucks running,” Mark said.

“Our company is big into volunteering,” said Dave Kreps, taking a short break from loading branches onto the skid steer and mashing them down so Matt could see where he was going.

“I’ve done this trail once from Chesterton to Hobart,” riding a bike alongside his wife, Kreps said. That sounds like a long ride, but it was even longer because he had to return to the car in Chesterton after getting to Hobart. “With a big bike ride like this, we get a big Dairy Queen treat,” he said.

At Portage’s wastewater treatment plant, Kreps is helping install new equipment. The city’s crew there are “the best people I’ve ever worked with,” he said.

Utilities Superintendent Tracie Marshall returned the compliment. “They’re like family,” she said. “They came and did the work. If there was a problem, they came and told me when it was fixed.”

The city is on a long-overdue spending spree for its wastewater treatment system, spending $14 million on new clarifiers and a solar array at the plant and $31 million this year on a north side interceptor – think of it as a giant artery transporting wastewater to the heart of the system, the treatment plant – along with lift stations in the field and an ultraviolet treatment system at the plant.

“We do a lot of work with Portage,” Mark Hall said, so the company wanted to find a way to give back to the city.

Gabrielle Taber, Commonwealth’s director of Indiana business development operations, said her company feels the same way.

“We picked a very good day to do this,” with a break from the hotter weather earlier this month, she said.

“It was a great turnout. It really was,” Taber said, allowing the volunteers to finish a couple of hours early.

Along with Thieneman and Commonwealth, the city had crews from the treatment plant, field services and park department there. Portage Township Trustee Brendan Clancy sent workers and equipment after seeing a call for volunteers posted.

Marshall and Smith worked together to come up with the trail cleanup project.

“We’re overworked,” Smith said. “We have five full-time employees. We have 19 parks.”

“We will never turn away help,” she said of volunteers offering their service to the parks. “There’s never a lack of things to do.”

Figuring 50 working putting in six hours Friday, that’s 300 hours of volunteer work, “a value right under $10,000,” not counting the equipment they brought, Smith said.

“A lot of time our work is reactive because we are so small,” she said. After receiving calls about the need to trim vegetation along the trail, she knew this was the right project for Thieneman and Commonwealth.

“We’re overwhelmed with gratitude. Truly,” Smith said.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.