March 26, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
Good citizens doing good deeds!
Eddie Ramos and Tara Hunt, operators of Kayaking Adventures of Tennessee were honored by the county commission and county mayor with “Community Service Awards” during Monday night’s regular monthly meeting for the volunteer work they do in collecting, bagging, and properly disposing of litter from the lake and other places in the county.
The effort is part of the couple’s KAT Challenge urging communities to keep waterways clean.
“Eddie and Tara have done some great things for DeKalb County. After the Jamboree they cleaned up around the square and they have taken all kinds of trash out of hollows, etc and have helped clean up DeKalb County to make it a better place. We want to recognize them with community service awards,” said County Mayor Matt Adcock.
The commission voted unanimously to approve the recognition awards.
In December, 2022, Eddie and Tara were recognized by the Smithville Mayor and Aldermen for cleaning up streets in the downtown square area of the leftover candy and debris from the Smithville Christmas Parade. At that time, Mayor Josh Miller and the aldermen thanked and applauded Eddie and Tara for their work in bagging the garbage on a Sunday for city workers to easily pick up the following Monday morning.
Kayaking Adventures of Tennessee offers guided kayak trips to Burgess Falls in Sparta.
From that guided tours experience Eddie and Tara came up with the idea for a KAT Challenge giving participants on the trips the option to carry along a bag provided by KAT to pick up as much trash as possible. The person who collects the most on the trip gets a shiny new KAT Challenge Button and their picture on the KAT website and on the KAT Challenge Page. All who participate also get a special shout-out on the KAT FB and Instagram pages for being protectors of beautiful Tennessee waterways.
Hunt said much of the cleanup effort is done during the fall and winter season.
“We do this cleanup on every kayak trip through out KAT Challenge competition and in our off season we devote as much of our time as possible to cleaning up DeKalb, White, and Putnam counties. We do cleanups all winter long, at least four or five days a week,” said Hunt. “We have a big trailer that we usually have our kayaks in, and we take it out, go all over, and fill it up as well as our pickup truck. I consider it a hobby. I love doing it. The more trash we can get the more fun it is for me. We post our cleanup events in the wintertime on our personal pages and people can join us and they often do. We have had people on kayaks come with us out on the water in some of our organized cleanups. We do a lot with responsible stewardship so they will organize a cleanup and we will go to places like Watts Bar Lake and help with their cleanups,” said Hunt.
“We welcome anyone to join us or to clean up their own part of the lake or neighborhood because it makes a difference,” said Ramos. “When we go back to the places we have cleaned up there is a lot less litter than there had been before. When you start going out in nature and you see how beautiful it is and then you start seeing people throw stuff down or not packing it up and taking it back out, that is something that bothers me,” added Ramos. “We just went to Burgess Falls this last Saturday. We try to keep the base of that clean. It’s a state park. There was a big group of people who had just left and they had thrown all their apple cores and orange peels on the ground. The orange peels take two years to break down. Plus, its not natural to the environment. We picked all that up and left it prettier for the next group who decides to go down there,” said Ramos.
“We started doing recycling on the plastics we were getting,” Ramos continued. “The first time we decided to do recycling was when we went to Four Seasons Marina. We collected tons of plastic. That led us to going to the basketball games and other places and cleaning up their plastic,” said Ramos.
Eddie and Tara said the county’s solid waste department has also been a big help in their cleanup effort.
“The solid waste department is letting us bring tires, etc,” said Hunt.
“Tires is one of the main things we pull from the lake and (County Solid Waste Director) James (Goff) has been a blessing to allow us to pile those tires there,” added Ramos.
In addition to Goff, Eddie and Tara said they appreciate all the support and encouragement they have received from the community and especially to Center Hill Lake Resource Manager Kevin Salvilla, the state parks, the county mayor and county commission, and local businessman and county commissioner Tony Luna.