With the ending of the annual PRIDE cleanup only days away, local officials and volunteers are tying up the loose ends and planning for future projects.

Several roadside cleanups have already been completed by community volunteers, inmates and county, city and state employees.

"I'm a bit impressed with the citizen turnout," Floyd County Judge-Executive Paul Hunt Thompson said, "Students are involved, individual people are involved in cleaning up their communities, several towns are cleaning up."

Last Friday, 41 JROTC students at Allen Central High School picked up 251 bags of garbage on roadways near the school.

Inmates with the Floyd County Detention Center, working with PRIDE and the city, which donated equipment for the project, cleaned an illegal dump and roadside litter in West Prestonsburg yesterday.

"It's so disturbing when you're driving up a road and you look out and see the ditch lines full of garbage," Thompson said. "All someone has to do is put a bag in their car and take the stuff home and put it in the garbage. Yet, they throw it out the window. I just don't understand it."

Roadside cleanup projects are still planned this week for Arkansas Creek, Route 404 and Route 114 near the Middle Creek Battlefield.

The county received a $125,000 supergrant last week to clean up a 50-year-old dump on the Buckingham Mountaintop.

Planning is also underway to clean up an illegal dump in Town Branch this year. A group of college students, working with the Long-Term Recovery Committee, is also expected to clean debris-filled waterways in Middle Creek.

Thompson says the county road department is still dealing with several flood damage problems, which is why the county did not provide extra door-to-door pickup during the cleanup this year.

Currently, the fiscal court has a tentative plan to host another countywide cleanup this fall, but weather is the determining factor, he said.

"If we don't have a flood or something along those lines, we're going to try to go around and pick up as much as we can. We may even have a white goods buy back," Thompson said. "We have too much work to do on the roads this summer, and more people are calling in. We have had seven floods, six that were declared disasters, in the last six years. We still got a lot of work to do."

Mr. Metal Recycling, located near Allen Elementary, does pay for used appliances that are brought to its facility. Call (606) 874-9657 for more information.

Those interested in working with the Floyd County PRIDE Committee in planning future cleanup projects or educational programs for the county can call (606) 886-0498 for more information.