DRIVE BY ONE OF Preston Hollow’s many parks on any given day, and you will see a well-utilized urban amenity. Children soar on swing sets, zip down slides and meander on the monkey bars. Covered pavilions host birthday parties, end-of-school celebrations and family fiestas. Team sports compete on soccer pitches and softball diamonds, while in-line skaters share paths with baby strollers and dog walkers.
Those green spaces provide not only a recreational function for our residents, but also contribute to the fabric of our neighborhood. The park serves as the modern-day town square for urban residents, a place where they can meet and greet and get to know each other.
Yet our parks are often victims of the very popularity they create. The enthusiasts who benefit from the parks’ amenities frequently become the prime culprits of behavior that makes the parks less inviting. Pet owners who use the green space as an unofficial no-leash zone and don’t pick up waste that creates a health hazard for small children. Large parties or individuals who leave behind litter and bags of refuse next to full waste cans that attract varmints and scavengers.
Often, loose garbage blows out of the overstuffed receptacles, spoiling the park and the adjoining neighborhood streets before city parks’ crews can make their round to empty the containers.
The Dallas Parks and Recreation Department recently launched a program that reflects the need for better trash conservation in area parks. “The Morning After” campaign they’ve created is perfect to raise awareness of the growing pains that often afflict our neighborhood parks, especially the day after a large event or a weekend. If park users managed their own trash – by taking home whatever refuse their visit generates – they would create a recreational environment that benefits not only those who use the park, but those who live next door to it. Since none of the refuse originates in the park, it shouldn’t be difficult for each person using the park to leave no trash behind.
It is important as a neighborhood, and as a city, that we limit the negative impact of the parks’ popularity on the surroundings, something similar to the low-impact guidelines that govern our nation’s national parks and forests.
Recreational visitors, whether hiking or camping in a national forest, encounter signs and park instructions to pack out whatever they have packed in with them. Trash receptacles are few and far between because of the attraction they present for foraging wild animals, so park users have to haul trash away for disposal elsewhere.
“The Morning After” campaign seeks to create this type of behavior among city park users. The philosophy that users should “leave no trace” of their passing is one we should all advocate so that neighborhood parks remains in the same condition for all to enjoy.
I love the atmosphere that the park provides for residents of all ages, but after a busy weekend, the park in my neighborhood is often a trash-swept eyesore. The Parks and Recreation department is asking everyone to “stash their trash” whenever they use a city park and leave the park in the same, or better, condition than they found it.
For information about the campaign, contact the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department at 214-670-4100, or visit www.dallascityhall.com.
