Irwin couple spearheads tire cleanup along the Yough

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An Irwin couple who are avid kayakers on the Youghiogheny River were tired of seeing the eyesore of abandoned tires along the shore and in the water near the Westmoreland-Allegheny border.

So they “decided to do something about it,” said Lisa Cimbala, 62, who is tackling the monumental chore of collecting the tires with her husband, Alan Hill, 68.

“Alan and I have been wanting to do this. We would see the tires and it was disgusting. We knew it was possible because others had done it,” Cimbala said of the effort to recycle the tires.

They planned the cleanup for the month of August, when the water was warmer and water levels a little lower. They weren’t sure how many tires they might be able to collect with just the two of them paddling in their kayaks and being able to remove just two tires at a time, Cimbala said.

“When Alan and I started planning this, we did not know if we could get any help,” Cimbala said.

After Lisa collected a few tires, she put the word out on the Facebook page of the Youghiogheny Sports People Association in Coulter, South Versailles, where they are members and have access to a dock in the river, Hill said.

“It sort of snowballed” after Cimbala spread the word through the organization’s Facebook page, and about 20 people joined in the effort, many of whom were fellow members of the association, Hill said.

Members of the North Huntingdon EMS/Rescue 8 swiftwater rescue team joined in the effort with their boats.

“They were wonderful,” Cimbala said.

Using their kayaks, boats and jet skis on August weekends, they managed to round up 509 tires from an area near the Turner Valley Recreational Complex in North Huntingdon upriver of Coulter, to an area about a mile downstream of Coulter.

“We had a lot of fun doing this,” Cimbala said.

About half of the tires they collected were removed from an area around an island near the Turner Valley complex, Hill said.

They want to duplicate their efforts next year, expanding the cleanup area if possible.