NEW CONCORD, Ky. — For the past two months, Living Lands & Waters has been working in Kentucky, clearing debris from a lake following an early December tornado.
The tornado ripped through the western part of the state Dec. 10, killing dozens and leaving behind a trail of devastation. Around the lake, which sits on the Kentucky and Tennessee border, parts of houses, pieces of wood, cars and even boats were tossed into the water.
Now, over two months on, the cleanup effort throughout the region is still ongoing. But around the lake, the helping hands from the Quad Cities say they're not going to leave until the job is finished.
"We're here to help and we're not gonna leave till the job's done and it's safe for all the boaters and all the people to use the lake," said Chad Pegracke, founder of Living Lands & Waters. "It's a really big deal down here. So yeah, happy to be here helping."
The team has been helping out, pulling garbage from the shores and the water, since Dec. 23. They estimate they'll continue the cleanup effort for at least another month.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Pegracke said it looked like a bomb had gone off in the impacted communities. During the first week of cleanup, his team simply focused on pulling out all of the sunken boats and cars.
It's grueling work, with crew members often putting in 8 to 12 hour days in all sorts of weather conditions. Garbage is typically piled up, by hand, and then loaded onto a barge via an excavator donated by Deere & Company. From there, the group can bring all of the debris to a park, where the county hauls it away.
If crew members aren't near an excavator, they'll load all of the garbage onto boats and carry it across the water.
So far, they've cleared out 1.2 million pounds of wood, metal, nails, Styrofoam and more.
"It's just a little over 4,000 cubic yards that we've taken out," Pegracke said. "It's like 100 semi-loads."
Still, Living Lands & Waters estimates there's still hundreds of thousands of pounds of debris to still be collected.
Finishing that work is a race against the clock. The lake's water levels are currently low, typical for the winter months. But the team knows that once spring hits, and the water levels start to rise again, anything that's still on the shore will be washed away.
"Time is not on our side, in a weird way, because we just have to get it done and there's so much," said Callie Schaser, Living Lands & Waters communication specialist. Both Schaser and Pegracke spoke to News 8 during a quick lunch break, in the middle of their cleanup efforts. "We're taking it every day and doing it to the fullest that can, to get as much as we can."
The lake is a popular boating and swimming destination in the summer, and low points in the water are a special point of concern, once the warm weather rolls back in.
"There's so many people that come here during the summer to boat, recreational fishing, competitive fishing and kids are doing different watersports. So if there's a ton of nails and boards and plastics and metal, it's not good," Schaser said. "If there's somewhere pretty shallow and you're going through on your boat, you could get cut up."
Several other organizations, both local and national, have also joined in on the effort. When we spoke to the team, there was a group of AmeriCorps students helping with the cleanup.
"It's so awesome because that's what's really getting all the trash is the hands," Schaser said.
And slowly but surely, after months of chipping away at the mess, the team says they are able to notice a difference, despite how overwhelming the task may seem.
"We just kind of take it section by section and it's funny, we'll go out in the boat and see it looks a lot better," Schaser said. "I remember Chad always saying, 'It's not me verse the river, it's me verse these coke bottles. Me verse that can.' Like that's all it is! If you think about it in those little increments, it makes it a lot easier to do and keep going. That's the most important part is just keep moving forward."
It's work that hasn't gone unnoticed by the community either. The team is often spotted out at dinner as the 'cleanup crew.'
"There just wasn't anybody else with the tools like what we have to do what we do, so we're happy to help," he said. "It's all about teamwork. And that's what it's all about, you know? Getting the lake clean and getting people back on track. We're happy to be a small part of it."
The work is a little different from the usual river cleanup that the Living Lands & Waters team is used to, but it's just as important.
"People moved here and they celebrate the lake. They live on the lake. It's a big part of people's lives, similar to the Mississippi River in the Quad Cities, but maybe even more so. Cleaning up, it's a top priority," Pegracke said. "It's devastating. But sometimes people come together in bad times, and this is a perfect example of that."