Mother and son team up to remove trash from American Fork Canyon

AMERICAN FORK CANYON, Utah (KUTV) — For about a year, Shannon and JJ Payne have been going to American Fork Canyon once a week to pick up trash in the area.

It all started when they were walking one day and noticed all the trash. They wanted to be the answer to the problem, so they started “American Fork Canyon Cleanup,” and now it’s starting to grow.

American Fork Canyon is home to beautiful mountains and popular waterbodies, such as Tibble Fork Reservoir.

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“We come probably two or three times a year,” said Poria Nejad about Tibble Fork.

Nejad paddleboards all over the state, and he’s well aware of the trash problem in what should be pristine locations. He said he finds trash every single time he’s on the water.

“It feels disrespectful to nature,” he said. “You’re out there, you’re basically in the living room of the animals who live in that area.”

Shannon and JJ feel the same way. And after seeing the amount of trash in the area, they decided together to do something about it.

“It just looks so ugly when all the trash is there,” JJ said.

For about a year, they’ve come up with bags and gloves and pick up as much as they can.

“We’ve been surprised at the lengths people will go to not carry their trash out,” Shannon said. “They’ll dig holes and bury their trash. They’ll hide it in trees.”

Sometimes they’ll have to stop because they don’t have enough space for all the trash.

2news reached out the forest service to see how bad the problem is, but didn’t hear back.

“I understand why the forest service doesn’t leave an open dumpster here because it attracts the bears and the different animals,” Shannon said.

So, they’ve taken it upon themselves to do it, and hope more people will be like Nejad and his group, who not only cleaned up their own trash, but also some other things they found.

“It’s pretty easy to not leave trash,” JJ said.

Since they’ve started, more friends and family have started to help. They’ve even had a couple of organizations reach out to say they’d like to help.

Timpanogos Hiking said they’d donate shirts for volunteers and Trash Panda Disposal said they’d provide a dumpster.

If you’d like to help, you can keep updated with when they do the cleanups by following “american_fork_canyon_cleanup” on Instagram.

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