RESIDENTS PITCH IN TO CLEAN UP; PROJECTS CONCLUDE PRIDE WEEK.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

A collective cleaning bug swept the valley on Saturday, as residents from Castaic to Canyon Country hauled oversized or hazardous clutter to dump sites and volunteers gardened at Heritage Junction.

The annual community spring cleaning, called Santa Clarita Pride Week, concluded on Saturday with city workers manning four spots for the free collection of large discards, like ragged furniture and broken appliances.

The service not only brings the dumpsters and heavy equipment to convenient drop-off sites in Saugus, Valencia, Newhall and Canyon Country, but also saves residents the dumping fee they would have to pay at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill.

``I didn't know the dump site was going to be free. I had $27 ready to hand over,'' said Gary Rich, a Canyon Country resident who had just dropped off a truckload of construction debris. He planned to make another trip to the dump site to throw away old electric appliances from his mother-in-law's newly remodeled kitchen.

It was a family effort for Rich and his wife Claire, with their 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter in tow. Their second stop of the day was Los Angeles County's 10th annual Household Hazardous Waste Round-Up, held in the College of the Canyons parking lot. There, the Rich family got rid of old cans of paint, a car battery and some motor oil - ``stuff that's been sitting in the garage for a year,'' Gary Rich said.

On Market Street in Newhall, Cesar Chavez, 22, was driving one of 20 vehicles lined up at a fenced-off dirt lot next to the railroad tracks. As one pickup, minivan and sport utility after another left behind piles of tree branches, worn-out mattresses and ratty couches, heavy construction equipment shoveled the discards into giant metal trash bins.

When full, the bins were hauled away by Santa Clarita Disposal trucks.

Chavez's truck bed was loaded with debris from his house and his neighbor's home - broken toilets, rusty bicycles, boards and furniture that had been chopped into smaller pieces for hauling to the discard site.

``We've still got two more loads,'' Chavez said. ``This is better than going to the dump.''

At the hazardous waste round-up, organized and staffed by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, more than 90 percent of the materials collected are recycled. Some items, like half-full cans of paint, are given to cities for use in covering up graffiti, said Miles Fairweather, a supervising engineering technician for the agency.

Some of the aerosol products that people discard must be incinerated because they can't be recycled, Fairweather said.

He couldn't estimate the tonnage that sanitation workers would collect at College of the Canyons. ``We're expecting about 2,000 cars today,'' Fairweather said as he surveyed the long line of vehicles snaking through the coned-off parking lot.

Pride Week began more than a decade ago, before Santa Clarita became a city, and the tradition has grown in scope every year, said Barbara Myler, a volunteer coordinator for the event.

Many of the cleanups took place during the week, with service clubs, youth groups and church congregations fanning out to schools and parks across the Santa Clarita Valley to pick up trash and tackle other chores, Myler said. Last year alone, about 1,000 volunteers manned cleanup spots across the valley, she added.

This year, three local tire dealers agreed to accept residents' worn-out tires. Local trash haulers also provided free use of their personnel and garbage trucks to dispose of the waste left at the four drop-off spots, Myler said.

``We'd much rather have (large discards) end up at our Pride Week site than some place by the side of the road,'' Myler said.

Meanwhile, over at Heritage Junction, three dozen adults and children from a Mormon congregation in Valencia pulled weeds that had taken over the rose gardens between the Pardee House and the Newhall Ranch House. The Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society, which is restoring the vintage homes at the 16-acre reserve next to Hart Park, counts on the church volunteers for their annual gardening assistance.

``This year, El Nino did us in,'' said historical society member Paul Kreutzer, referring to the thick patches of weeds that had sprouted throughout Heritage Garden, ringed by a white picket fence.

Cub Scouts, Brownies and their siblings, all wearing oversized blue Santa Clarita Pride Week 1998 T-shirts, were buffeted by gusty winds as they gardened. The whistle and roar of Metrolink and freight trains zooming past Heritage Junction periodically distracted the youngsters, who dropped their rakes, hoes, shovels and brooms to scamper over to the fence and watch the locomotives.

``I think it's good for them to learn to do service things,'' said Kymmer Crookston, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Valencia as she yanked the pesky vegetation out of the soil.

``We take turns pulling weeds,'' said Jessika Tweedy, a 7-year-old Brownie who was filling up a purple and yellow toy wheelbarrow with her friend.

``Why are we doing this?'' troop leader Kelly Miller quizzed her Brownie charges.

``So we can help the earth,'' her 7-year-old daughter Heather replied.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) Heather Miller pulls high weeds at Heritage Junction in Newhall on Saturday

(2) Nathan Crookston hauls a large weed at Heritage Junction during the conclusion of Pride Week, an annual cleanup effort.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News