ECCA organizes a lot of projects, all for the ultimate purpose of bringing together people whose paths might never otherwise have crossed. We do so much that it’s hard to keep track (even for us!), so we keep a running diary of sorts. Scroll down to see what we’ve been up to.
4.25.26 Everyday is Earth Day, right? Last week we partnered on two big, logistically complicated highway cleanups. The first, with WSDOT, had us picking up trash on a gnarly stretch of Highway 14 between 164th Ave. and I-205. We’ve seen a shocking variety of trash in our four years working on Highway 14, but nothing prepared us for the sheer amount of plastic we pulled out of the water in the ditches alongside this segment of highway. In the second cleanup, with the Port of Camas-Washougal, we focused on the highway adjacent to the Port industrial park in Washougal, where we see lots of commercial trash, including the ubiquitous lumber tags, chunks of Styrofoam and cardboard boxes. Photos (from top left, clockwise): most of the ECCA team that worked with WSDOT; a typical stretch of the 164th Ave. to I-205 segment; plastic and Styrofoam in running water draining under the highway; a few of the dozens of plastic water bottles we picked up; our volunteer, Lisa, with the big plastic bags we find everywhere on this highway; and the Port employees who worked with us on the south side of Highway 14 in Washougal. Great job, everyone. Let’s keep at it until we clean up this mess and fix the broken system that allows this trash to accumulate in the first place.
2.20.26 A soul food night. We had a full house last night at ReFuel, the free community meal program that serves dinner every Friday in Washougal. Our nine-person ECCA team served about 60 dinners. (All the cooking was done by the culinary arts students at WHS.) What was on the menu? Soul food! Roast pork with red-eye gravy; collard greens with black-eyes peas and sausage; sweet potato rolls; cornbread baked in cast-iron skillets; potato salad; and banana pudding. What a feast. Our next ReFuel dinner is in July. Want to volunteer? Sign up here.
1.20.26 Winter? The work goes on. Our Highway 14 trash cleanup volunteers are out all winter on any dry day they can find. Why? To help keep mountains of litters off this scenic highway and out of the delicate watershed area it borders — and to try to figure out why so much trash ends up on this highway to start with. Meet Sharon and Lisa, our newest volunteer, who joined an 8-person crew on Tuesday in Camas. Winter teams are impromptu rather than pre-scheduled. Want to be on our call list? Sign up here.
1.12.26 The year behind us, and the ahead. We worked hard to cultivate community and build connection in East County in 2025. In the year that just wrapped up:
- 25 ECCA volunteers spent 288 hours cleaning up Highway 14 in Camas and Washougal and advocating for ways to reduce the amount of litter that ends up there.
- 26 volunteers planted and maintained 8,000 square feet of native wildflowers alongside Highway 14 in Washougal.
- 20 volunteer mentors met with 71 Washougal High School students for a total of 447 sessions to help them improve their academic performance. And … it worked!
- 17 volunteers donated 85 hours preparing and serving meals to people in need.
- 20 teenagers and their relatives participated in East County Voices, a storytelling project that captures and preserves memories.
In 2026, we will continue these core projects while more intentionally focusing on helping families in East County who are feeling unmoored, neglected or afraid. We invite you to join us in this community-strengthening work.
12.13.25 Second-Saturday Pollinator Party! What fun we had at Second Saturday at Beaver Park in Washougal last weekend. Second Saturday is a new series launched by the Parks Commission that hosts a crafts-and-activities event every month at one of the city’s parks. Today’s event was pollinator-themed. At our table, we helped kids make seed balls (or animals, as the case may be) for placing in their yards at home. Read more about the Parks Passport program, which includes the Second Saturday events, here.
11.8.25 Tucking the wildflowers beds in for winter. A bunch of folks from the community gathered on Saturday to plant a new expansion plot at our Highway 14 native wildflower site in Washougal. It was a hard-working day, pulling up solarization plastic from wet, heavy soil and laying down and rolling seed on the prepared section. We planted about 20 varieties of natives, and based our selection on what we’ve learned about which plants do well in this sandy, rocky soil. This is a by-community, for-community project. Starting next spring May, we’ll begin doing some weeding. We hope you’ll join us in this uplifting work!
10.17.25 Lots of new folks using ReFuel. What a busy night we had serving dinner at ReFuel on Friday! We served 75 dinners (many more than usual), and were particularly interested to see that more families, children, and young adults came in for this free meal than we’d ever seen before. While we were thrilled they were using this resource, we’re wondering what their presence can tell us about food insecurity in this moment. In any case, we want to call out our wonderful community volunteers, and especially the culinary students at WHS who did all the cooking! Our next meal will be in spring: we fill our volunteers slots with folks from the community, so please join us.
8.26.25 Our CSP mentoring works, and that’s a fact. Last year, the third year of our Community-School Partnership program at Washougal High School, we were lucky enough to have Portland State University data science students rigorously evaluate the program’s impact on students’ grades. The study looked at not just whether mentored students’ grades rose, fell, or stayed the same in a particular class, but how those students did in comparison to classmates not being mentored. In the end, we learned what we’d long suspected, and what teachers and students themselves had been confirming anecdotally. The program has a strong effect on the students’ grades in the class in which they’re being mentored, typically helping them catch up to their classmates. As a bonus, participation in CSP mentoring also boosts students’ grades in their other classes. Read more about these evaluation results, and consider joining our mentor team.
Mentor Cindy Eisenman working with a student on English at Washougal High School.
7.12.25 Three cake dudes. We love it when teens join our projects, and these guys — Jacob, Geo and Oliver — have become regulars. They were part of the crew Friday night that served dinner at ReFuel Washougal, the weekly meal program that provides food and social connection for anyone who needs it. Their speciality? Well, they did a great job decorating and serving up the sheet cake! ECCA’s next ReFuel meal is Oct. 17. Sign up to join us here.
6.27.25 Just wow. Our Highway 14 wildflowers in Washougal had a fabulous blooming season.
6.27.25 A donation for our new library. We were really thrilled today to present the Friends of the Washougal Community Library with this check for $500 from our recent clothing drive. It’s for the best possible cause — a new library that will provide vastly improved learning resources and meeting spaces for us all. Thanks to everyone who donated to the drive!
5.13.25 Flower-tenders needed: Sign up here to join our watering, weeding and weed-whacking teams, and/or to join us on May 31 to lay down solarization plastic for our expansion plot. Our Highway 14 wildflower patch — located between the two roundabouts in Washougal — is a labor of love created by dozens of community members. Come learn about the project and help coax these flowers along.
4.19.25 Weeding party! A group of eight or so volunteers met to do a little weeding on Highway 14 in Washougal last weekend — our attempt to take out the invasive weeds that could crowd out our starting-to-bloom native wildflowers. We’ll be weeding a few more times this spring, and need folks who can help. Are you a gardener? Are you interested in learning how to identify the really problematic weeds? Come on out with us. Our next dates are May 3 and/or May 24. Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com, and we’ll give you the details.
3.28.25 A ReFuel dinner with Latin flair. We had a fun evening at ReFuel last night in the newly refurbished Washougal Community Center (so bright and airy now!). Chicken thighs with salsa verde, spicy red rice and veggies, salad, and tres dulce cake — all prepared by advanced culinary arts students at Washougal High School and served by our team of volunteers. Thanks Earl, Barb, John, Shawn, Lori, Walida, Geo, Melanie, Jacob, Katina and Oliver!
3.17.25 Our Summer 2025 Highway Cleanup Schedule is Out! Get all the details and sign up here for dates April-November in Washougal and Camas. We’re starting in just a few weeks; can’t wait to get out in the sunshine and return this road to its scenic glory.
11.22.24 We love it when the cooks do the serving and cleanup, too! One of ECCA’s priorities is developing projects for and with young people; that’s why we are thrilled that our partnership with Washougal High School’s advanced culinary arts class has been such a success. Our third meal together on Nov. 22 was a blast, and high school students were front and center — along with open-faced turkey meatloaf sandwiches.
11.16.24 If you want a garden, you’ve got to sow the seeds. Thus go the lyrics of one of our favorite songs, Crowded Table, by the Highwomen. Sowing seeds is what about 20 of us did on Nov. 16 when we finally got to plant our second patch of native wildflowers along Highway 14 in Washougal. Now … all we need is rain and time. Want to help document what’s growing next spring and maintain the growing flowers? Let us know.
The planting team. Project leader Dion Gutkind is fifth from left.
10.12.24 Preparing to plant. We were thrilled to have a huge bunch of volunteers (27!) on Oct. 12 to help remove the solarization plastic from our wildflower plot on Highway 14 in Washougal. After a summer of cooking in the sun, the weeds and grass are dead, and we’ll be ready to plant native seeds in November. Thanks, crew!
10.8.24 Time to hit “record” on your stories. Residents of East Clark County are invited to participate in East County Voices, an audio story collection project aimed at strengthening community through storytelling. In this project, pairs of people – friends, relatives, coworkers – interview one another about their lives and personal histories. The resulting conversations are professionally recorded and uploaded to the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. The model is based on StoryCorps, a national project that has facilitated and recorded thousands of conversations throughout the country for 20 years. East County Voices began collecting stories last spring and will continue through the end of December. Recording dates: • Saturday, November 2 (9am-2pm) • Saturday, December 7 (9am-2pm) Location: The Community Meeting room of the Camas Police Station, 2100 NE 3rd Ave, Camas. Listen to East County Voices audio stories here: https://eastcountyvoices.org/east-county-voices/. Register to participate here.
Ya gotta see this. Come caravan with us to a screening of Join or Die, a documentary about why participation in our local civic life is so essential to democracy. Oct 10 from 7-9 at Portland Community College. Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com.
8.9.24 How are our beliefs shaped? Why are we so attracted to “us vs. them” thinking? Register now for “No Us, No Them: How to Make Sense of a Complex World,” a training about how the complexity of the world and the distorting effects of media create “us vs. them” thinking — and how that thinking damages our social fabric. This 2.5-hour event is for anyone who wants to pick apart how our beliefs about issues are generated; how our media consumption habits limit our viewpoints; and how we can test our confidence in our beliefs through a simple technique called “thinking in bets.” The workshop will be on Saturday Aug. 17, from 9:30-noon at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Washougal. It’s free and open to all; coffee and bagels will be served. The trainer is Ryan Nakade from Cure:PNW. Register here to let us know you’re attending!
6.29.24 We sowed the seeds, now we’re tending the plants. After so much planning and work, the wildflowers we planted last November beside Highway 14 in Washougal are blooming, and they’re gorgeous. Maybe you’ve noticed them, driving by? Godetia, sea blush, corn poppies, brown-eyed susans, Western yarrow, Oregon sunshine and globe gilia are all in some stage of bloom, with coreopsis and goldenrod yet to come. This work was always an experiment, and we’re learning as we go and documenting our successes and failures. For the record, what’s worked so far? Solarizing the soil to rid it of grass and weeds. It’s hands-down the best method for preparing this particular patch of ground for seeds. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t occasionally having to weed, though. Wild carrot and hare’s-foot clover are everywhere, it turns out, and will creep in wherever they can.
6.27.24 Welcome Washougal’s newest piece of public art — co-created and painted with residents. We’re thrilled that the mural the community worked on throughout the spring was installed on the bathroom building in Hamllik Park this week. It was a long day of measuring, drilling, touch-ups and last-minute painting, but so worth it. A special feature of this mural is that it wraps around three sides of the building, so you have to walk around to get the full effect. The official dedication will be July 6 at 11am. Join us! We thank WACA and the City of Washougal for partnering with us on this uplifting project, and most of all to the residents who contributed to its creation.
5.19.24 Yes, we’ll have more wildflowers, please. And … another 2,000-square-foot patch of ground alongside SR-14 in Washougal is tucked in under solarization plastic for the summer! Much thanks to our new volunteers Dominic, Ken, Jim, and Natalia and her husband Daniel. Also, for our Highway 14 trash cleanup yesterday in Camas and Washougal (yes, we know this road REALLY well by this point), thanks to new volunteers Brian, Tawn and Whitney.
4.28.24 What’s more fun than painting a mural? Uh … nothing. Yesterday was our first community mural-painting day, where lots of folks — little kids, big kids, parents, artists — gathered to begin filling in the design that will eventually be mounted on the park’s bathroom building. The community helped create the work, and it was SO MUCH FUN to see everyone picking up brushes and starting to fill it in. Yesterday we worked on just two of the four aluminum composite panels; soon we’ll invite everyone to help paint the other two. Stay tuned for the date! This mural is in the Addy St. neighborhood, but in the future we hope to bring the same process to other neighborhoods. Sincere thanks to the Washougal Arts and Culture Alliance and the City of Washougal for supporting this project.
4.20.24 We think everyday is Earth Day. Thanks to everybody who joined us for our fifth SR-14 trash cleanup of the season, especially newcomers Steve, Victoria and Tracy. We’re working hard in Camas this spring, which is trickier than Washougal for many reasons. Also trashier! Check out these photos. Seriously, why do we tolerate this? Instead of focusing on who should be cleaning it up, let’s focus on who tosses it, dumps it, and negligently lets it blow off their trucks in the first place. (That last photo? A set of World Books encyclopedias, tossed with other trash into a marshy area beside the highway.) Find out how to join our cleanups here.
4.14.24 The mural design team at work. Is there anything better than people of different generations working together to create something beautiful? On Friday, local artists, augmented by some young folks, transferred the Hamllik Park mural design to DiBond panels in preparation for group painting later this month. The panels will eventually be affixed to three walls of the park’s bathroom building. Community residents contributed ideas to the design and will get to work painting on April 28 in the park! We’re grateful for the support of the Washougal Arts and Culture Alliance and the City of Washougal.
3.30.24 Hello, sun. It was a glorious weekend, and we took advantage of it by picking up more ugly roadside trash on Highway 14 in Camas. As always, we found amazing amounts of plastic in every possible form — lumber tags, shopping bags, zip ties, flower pots, Starbucks and McDonald’s cups, Styrofoam packaging, latex gloves, pool noodles and so much more. We were delighted to pull a lot of it out of the drainage ditch water that flows through culverts under the highway and drains into Columbia. We ended up with 47 bags of trash, two tires, a half can of gasoline, and lots of metal debris; WSDOT will pick it all up for us in the next day or two. We’ve been working for two years to beautify this neglected stretch of local scenic highway. Please join us by signing up for a cleanup team here: https://forms.gle/Knowrhhbq5qaANzd7
3.25.24 Painting in the background. The Hamllik Park mural is underway! Last fall we invited folks from the Hamllik Park neighborhood to help design a mural for the bathroom building in the park, and soon they’ll get together to paint it. Interested in joining the painting teams? All ages and ability levels welcome. Email eastcountycitizens@gmail.com. Special thanks to Washougal Arts & Culture Alliance and the City of Washougal for their funding and partnership! In the meantime, check out this slideshow, which shows the artist team working on the background, and some conceptual sketches of the mural.
3.16.24 What an opening day! March 16 was the first regularly scheduled Highway 14 trash cleanup of the season, and we had a record large team — so big and spread out along the highway in Camas that we couldn’t wrangle everyone into a photo. Below is just half the team; thanks Debbi, Janet, Gordon, Betty and first-timer Julie! Thanks also to Randy, Mark, Lynne and Brenda who were working elsewhere on the road. We’re starting our third year of trash cleanups on this scenic highway, and we’re making a difference!
2.27.23 A Soul Food dinner. We continued our collaboration with Washougal High School’s advanced culinary arts class last Friday at ReFuel Washougal with a dinner of braised pork shoulder, black-eyes peas, shaved Brussel sprout and kale salad, and peach cobbler. We served about 70 dinners and made a bunch of people happy, ourselves included!
2.16.24 Help us beautify our lovely PNW by cleaning up roadside trash. Our spring-summer Highway 14 trash cleanup schedule is now available. Our teams go out about every two weeks from spring to fall to clean this scenic roadway. Join us! Learn more and sign up for one or more teams here.
1.26.24 Preparing food boxes and backpacks for neighbors in need. Thanks to the volunteers who joined our team to sort and prepare donated food for families and students who need extra help this winter. Most of the food came from the annual Stuff the Bus food drive in Camas and Washougal.
12.26.23 A Christmas-y meal. We served our second meal in a month at ReFuel Washougal on Dec. 22. This pre-Christmas meal is special because of the festive time of year, but it was important in another way, too: it marked the beginning of our collaboration with the culinary arts program at Washougal High School. The students and their teacher, Alex Yost, were the power behind our dinner of homemade chicken noodle soup and pineapple upside-down cake, doing everything from scaling up recipes to chopping vegetables, making broth and mixing the cake batter. Our next dinner is Feb. 23, 2024. Email us here to sign up.
11.25.23 Bringing young people power to ReFuel Washougal. On Nov. 24 we brought our largest-ever team of volunteers to prepare and serve dinner at ReFuel Washougal. We were excited to have children and teens join us, including culinary arts students from Washougal High School. All in all, our volunteers served 70 meals, every one of them scrumptious. (Home-baked holiday cookies were involved.) Next up: our Dec. 22 dinner.
11.16.23 Our plants and seeds are in (mostly)! We’ve been planning our 4,000-square-foot wildflower patch between the two roundabouts on SR-14 in Washougal for a year. Last weekend we planted our Oregon irises and Camas bulbs, and yesterday we planted our seeds. Whew! What a journey it’s been. What went in our carefully prepared ground? More than 20 different seeds in different configurations and mixes — but notably, lots of lupine, coreopsis, blanketflower, goldenrod, Douglas aster, yarrow, black-eyed susan, and California poppy and bluebells. We have a bit more planting to do, but in a week or so, we’ll wrap it up. Fingers crossed now for nice wet winter weather so our seeds can settle in and begin to germinate.
11.12.23 Frogs and mutual respect. What a great turnout we had Saturday afternoon at Hamllik Park as folks from the community began sharing their ideas for the mural we’ll be painting together soon! The mural will be on three sides of the park’s bathroom building, and will be a product of the community’s collective vision and talent. Yesterday was the very beginning of the idea-gathering, and we loved what people were posting on the idea board. We asked, “What does community mean to you?” Lots of things, it turns out! Partial funding for this project comes from the Washougal Arts and Cultural Alliance.
10.15.23 Taking up the plastic. Today was a landmark day for our SR-14 wildflower project — we took up the solarization plastic that we’d laid down in April in preparation for planting in November. Thanks to our volunteers Dion, Madeleine, George, Rhonda, Cindy, Jim, Ginny, Melanie, David, Rob and Barb! Onward to the seeds.
10.1.23 Sign up now — it’s wildflower time! Our SR-14 wildflower project kicks into high gear on Oct. 15 when we take up the solarization plastic that we put down in spring. Over Veterans’ Day weekend in November, we will plant live roots and lay down seeds from about 30 different species of native wildflower. Please join us in all this work! Click here for the signup form.
8.14.23 Fall SR-14 cleanup schedule and signup. Join us in beautifying this scenic highway and restoring our common spaces. Choose from Saturday and Sunday dates; all times are from 9am-11am. Details and signup here.
8.7.23 We keep working, and the roadside keeps getting cleaner. We passed something of a milestone today. We’ve now donated 360 volunteer hours to SR-14, the scenic riverside highway running through our East County communities into the Columbia River Gorge. If ECCA were a single person, that would be nine months of full-time work. Fortunately, we’re lots of people, so the work has been chopped into bite-sized chunks over many work dates and many teams. And we’re going to keep going! In July, our ECCA Adopt-a-Highway team began collaborating with the Camas-based Lyne Family team down the road. We’re attracting more volunteers than ever and working under some challenging conditions. Slowly, though, we’re reclaiming this road. Learn more and sign up here: https://forms.gle/a2J3BD4xJDqgCnzi9
7.8.23 It’s all about working together. Preparing and serving dinner at ReFuel Washougal takes a lot of planning and coordination. It takes lots of willing hands, too. That’s why we were so happy to have both veteran and new volunteers join us last night to chop, bake, scoop and package up meals for 75 diners. A giant thank you to (from left) Kaden, Mark, Jon, Denise, Ethan, Anne, Benjamin, and Melanie. Not pictured: Barb, Ginny, and David.
6.27.23 Stepping up to the trash problem as a community. On June 26, ECCA made a presentation to the Washougal City Council about what it’s learned about the trash that gets deposited on SR-14 and ideas for reducing the amount of it that ends up out there. The bottom line: Ugly roadside litter isn’t an unavoidable fact of life. It’s preventable. We outlined several approaches to the problem, and more surfaced in our conversation with the City Council. See our presentation here. And join us in this work, both on the roadside itself (see below) and in the policy actions that we know can make a difference. Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com.
5.30.23 See our whole roster of summer sign-up opportunities! We’ve got indoor and outdoor summer volunteering opportunities for just about every interest. SR-14 trash cleanup in Washougal and Camas, roadside wildflower-prepping & planting, cooking and serving meals to neighbors in need, even community mural planning. Teens welcome! Check out the activities here: https://forms.gle/Dhj3ZmVKbTNWf12q8, and email us eastcountycitizens@gmail.com with questions or suggestions.
5.15.26 Killing weeds with sun, not herbicides. Preparation of our wildflower beds between the SR-14 roundabouts in Washougal is well underway! This weekend, despite the heat, volunteers dug an 8-inch trench around the perimeter of half of the 4,000-dquare-foot plot and then laid down solarization plastic, pulling it tight and burying the edges. On the other half of the plot, we have mowed the grass down to soil level and will till it shallowly throughout the summer to kill grass and weeds. We’ll be planting both sides with the same seeds and live plant plugs in the fall. Want to help? We’re always eager for volunteers to join us. Email eastcountycitizens@gmail.com.
5.6.23 Prepping the highway for wildflowers. Making the roadside bloom is a beautiful goal, but it takes a lot of work. By the time we plant seeds next November on SR-14 between the two Washougal roundabouts, we’ll have been planning for an entire year. On May 6, we hit one of our milestones, taking our first large work party to the site to mow and rake in preparation for our next steps — laying solarization plastic over half the 4,000-square-foot area and repeatedly scarifying the other half. ECCA organizes a variety of projects, all of them volunteer-centric. Why? Lots of small reasons, but one big reason: We want to cultivate community. Join us. Next Wildflower Project date: May 13. Sign up here.
Some of the 16 volunteers who pitched in May 6 on our SR-14 Wildflower Project: from left, Ginny, Jim, Janet, Barb, Steve, Kathy, Lynne, Cindy, Evelyn and Jill. Not pictured: Jim L., Lukas, Rob, and Mark.
5.3.23 Youth Mental Health First Aid training wraps up. ECCA was thrilled to sponsor this three-part evidence-based training in partnership with Washougal High School. Paraeducators, school counselors, mentors, and parents attended to learn how to spot mental health challenges in teens and respond appropriately. We’d like to bring this valuable training back in the fall. Who should be in the audience? Youth group leaders, librarians, parents, school bus drivers, coaches, youth pastors, and anyone else who interacts with young people on a regular basis.
Some training participants, plus presenters Jilana and Rochelle from Lifeline Connections, on May 2.
4.29.23 Spring cleanup on SR-14. ECCA volunteers have been out on SR-14 in Washougal and Camas for more than a year now, cleaning up the roadway and thinking about all the ways we can collectively reduce the sheer amount of litter and junk that ends up out there. We hope to make a presentation to the Washougal City Council soon on that very issue. In the meantime, this is heavy work and it’s ongoing. It’s also fun and builds our community in all kinds of good ways. Join us. Our next cleanup is May 21, which is a rare Sunday outing. Sign up here.
4.27.23 May work dates set for SR-14 Wildflower bed preparation underway — volunteers needed! Since fall 2022, we have been working with the regional office of the WSDOT to bring wildflowers to the north side of SR-14 between the two Washougal roundabouts. Why? Because wildflowers are beautiful, they support our pollinators, and they put down deep roots, sequestering pollutants in highway runoff in the ground rather than allowing them into our rivers and drinking water. We plan to plant enough seeds and live plugs to fill a plot 200 feet long by 20 feet wide. We’ll need volunteers on May 6 and May 13 to begin preparing the ground. This is a whole-community project that will benefit all of us, not to mention passersby and daily commuters, and we’d love it if you’d join us. Sign up now by clicking on the dates.
3.26.23 Be part of a community response to youth mental health needs. The mental health of our young people is important to their success as individuals and to our wellbeing as a community. That’s why we hope you’ll join us for this free training in Youth Mental Health First Aid. YMHFA is an evidence-based program that teaches adults how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental health and substance use challenges among children and adolescents ages 12-18. It is designed for teachers, coaches, camp counselors, librarians, youth pastors, youth group leaders, parents, and anyone else who regularly interacts with young people. The trainings will take place on April 18, April 25, and May 2, from 4-6:30 pm each day in the Washougal High School Library. It is being provided free of charge by Lifeline Connections in Vancouver, and is presented by Washougal High School in partnership with ECCA. Go here for more information and to register: https://forms.gle/f9RLkxyxovKWoDzv5
3.24.23 Serving dinner at ReFuel. ECCA volunteers served 82 dinners Friday night at ReFuel Washougal. Not only that, but at the end of the night, they took the leftovers to the fire and police departments. Thanks, crew! Next ReFuel date: July 7. We’re all about engaging volunteers from the community, so we hope you’ll join us. Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com and we’ll sign you up.
3.20.23 Wildflower work dates set. We were thrilled that our SR-14 Wildflower Project was highlighted in the Camas-Washougal Post-Record this week. Read all about the project here. And by the way, mark your calendars: our first two work dates on site are May 6 and May 13. We need you! Stay tuned for a signup form.
2.23.23 Thank you Camas-Washougal Community Chest! ECCA is a nonprofit run by volunteers from top to bottom. That’s why financial support is so important, especially when we’re working on projects that take more than just organizational ability and muscle. That pretty much describes our SR-14 Wildflower Project, where we’ll be renting equipment, buying solarization plastic, and paying for native, certified-weed free wildflower seeds for the 4,000-square-foot bed we’ll be planting along the highway in Washougal this fall. So our sincere thanks to the Camas-Washougal Community Chest for supporting this project with a grant of $1,335. We’ll still have a little left to raise, but we know the community loves the idea of filling our landscape with beautiful pollinating plants, so they’ll step up, too. By the way, if you don’t know the Community Chest, check them out. This organization funds so many small local nonprofits that it’s kind of incredible.
1.30.23 Planning for SR-14 wildflowers. Spring’s not quite here, but we’re not letting that stop us! Check out the video below. In it, a group of us are planting a demonstration bed of wildflowers just east of the Washougal River Road/SR-14 rotary. Come spring, the 50-square-foot plot should be bursting with plains coreopsis, dwarf godetia, bluehead gilia, California bluebells, and corn poppies.
We planted this small bed because we’re eager to learn as much as we can about which native pollinating plants will thrive in our location and the best methods for the preparing the soil for seeds. Why? Because bigger things are coming. After months of planning with WSDOT, we’re soon going to begin preparing a 4,000-square-foot wildflower bed just down the highway that will include up to 25 species of native or near-native wildflowers. Preparing that much ground will be a real task, and we’ll need help with everything from mowing and dethatching to digging a perimeter trench. Know and love flowers, or just enjoy running big pieces of landscaping equipment? We need you! Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com.
12.23.22 Hot food on a cold, cold night. Cooking and serving dinner at ReFuel Washougal on December 23 was a real challenge, given the icy roads that kept more than half our volunteer team at home. But a few of us managed to get there anyway, some with the help of tire chains, and some of us showed up with family members willing to lend a hand. Due to the frigid temperatures, the community center where ReFuel is located was doubling as a severe-weather shelter, and we were joined by volunteers setting up cots and preparing for the night. Folks seeking warmth, a meal and companionship trickled in for hours. It was a holiday evening in the most meaningful sense, and we thank everyone who helped make it possible. Interested in joining ECCA at our ReFuel dinner in March? Email eastcountycitizens@gmail.com.
12.17.22 The Backpack Program. A lot of people may not know that the annual Stuff the Bus food drive provides food for a weekend supplemental nutrition program for schoolchildren. Through the “Backpack Program,” food bags are assembled and distributed to schools in Camas and Washougal — kids who don’t have enough food at home take the bags home each Friday. In the photos above, Jenny, an East County Citizens’ Alliance volunteer, puts food bags together at the Children’s Home Society and prepares boxes to be picked up and taken to schools for distribution. It’s a great example of how people in our communities help out their neighbors in need!
12.13.22 Sorting the food. The annual “Stuff the Bus” food drive in Camas and Washougal resulted in tens of thousands of pounds of food donations. That’s excellent news, but the work doesn’t end there. Someone needs to sort all the food so it can go to people most in need, including students in both cities who need to take food home over the weekends. To support these families and the work of the Children’s Home Society, ECCA recruited more than 20 volunteers to help (some of whom also ended up helping with the Children Home Society’s toy drive). As an added bonus, some of donated food from this and prior years that would ordinarily be thrown out is going to Urban Gleaners, a food program in Portland. Thank you Anne and Mark for going the extra mile (literally) and finding this still-good food a home! UPDATE: On Dec. 15, ECCA volunteers delivered 1,380 pounds of food to Urban Gleaners. All of it would have otherwise been tossed into the dumpster. We’re pretty thrilled about that!
12.1.22 Families were lined up around the block! Which is what made it so fun to play Santa’s photographer at this year’s Holiday Parade and Tree-lighting celebration in downtown Washougal. Thanks to ECCA volunteer Quinn Wilson for his photography skills, and to Barb Seaman for elving for him at the photo printout table. ECCA folks also helped keep the crowds safely behind the garland barriers while the floats went by, taking a break or two for the hot cocoa supplied by the city. And kudos to all the other organizers and helpers — to the high school band and carolers, to the public works folks, to the church volunteers — who produced this magical community event.
11.25.22 Dinner at ReFuel. The day after Thanksgiving, ECCA volunteers served more than 80 dinners to members of the community seeking food and companionship at ReFuel in downtown Washougal. We were thrilled to spend this fun and rewarding time with our neighbors, and look forward to coming back with another team on Dec. 23. Interested in joining us at ReFuel? Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com.
11.13.22 “Guardrail Garden” completed! After months of planning, ECCA volunteers finished installation of a new garden in downtown Washougal on Saturday. Situated at the base of the overpass on Washougal River Road, the near-native xeriscape garden features a mix of evergreen manzanitas, natural hybrids from Washington and Colorado and native perennials and wildflowers from the Willamette Valley. All of the plants are native to the western US, and half are native to Washougal itself. With time, rain and sun, this garden will grow up to be gorgeous. We can’t wait! Thanks to Ginny Frederick, who planned it, and to all the volunteers who prepped the soil and did the planting.
10.23.22 Planting our garden. For ECCA, beautifying our corner of the world by working together and growing nice things is both a real activity and a metaphor. We’re about unity, not division. We’re about saying, “This is what being a community looks like.” That’s why we’re thrilled to say that Phase 1 of our landscaping project at the base of the Washougal River Road overpass is complete! Our team got dirty and tired, but we did it. Additional plants will go in soon. Want to know more about this project or get involved as we nurture and maintain it? Email us at eastcountycitizens@gmail.com. (By the way, huge shout-out to Washougal Family Dental, which allowed us to run our hose to their outdoor spigot. We couldn’t grow this garden without them!)
10.2.22 3,000 pounds of trash. And counting. As of today, our volunteer trash crews have cleaned over 3,000 pounds of litter off SR-14. We’re thrilled to have taken a lead role in beautifying this highways, and know that the job isn’t done. But we want to pause to celebrate this milestone!
9.1.22 Focusing on our youngest students. What a busy summer we’ve had supporting Teachers Brigade, a local literacy nonprofit, with its summer school program by providing volunteers and books for young readers. This work is more important than ever due to well-documented learning interruptions caused by the pandemic. Some of the books we helped collect ultimately went to Read Northwest, another literacy group working in local schools. It’s by working together toward a common goal that we can make a difference for our local students.
7.16.22 Maintaining what we’ve cleaned. We did the heavy cleanups between the two roundabouts in the spring, and now we’re determined to keep that section of highway looking good. This morning, a five-person team collected six bags of trash, a tire, assorted large pieces of Styrofoam and plastic and — in a first for us — a crumpled lamp shade. With any luck at all, this will be one of our very last cleanups before we officially sign on with the state Adopt-a-Highway program. We can’t wait!
7.9.22 ECCA goes to ReFuel. We were thrilled to serve our first dinner at ReFuel Washougal on Friday, July 8. What was on the menu? Rotisserie chicken, potato salad, green salad, warm bread, cookies, cold drinks! We served 106 dinners and made new friends. We also learned more about this important city-run program and how it provides supplemental food to those most in need in our community. We can’t wait to go back, and hope you’ll join us next time.
6.11.22 We’re closing in our goal of a clean and scenic local Rte. 14. We continue to make progress cleaning up the voluminous trash on the eastbound side of Rte. 14 between the Washougal roundabouts. It’s particularly messy there, with a backlog of plastic cups, beer cans, vodka bottles and the inevitable lumber tags and labels, along with candy wrappers, rusty screwdrivers, and everything capable of falling off a car or truck. The blackberry bushes, now leafed out, are making the work painstaking and occasionally bloody. Nonetheless, Saturday pushed us up to almost 2,500 lbs. collected since we began cleaning Rte. 14 in March!
6.8.22 Providing support to the youngest readers. The pandemic affected the learning of children in ways that are still being understood. That’s why ECCA has partnered with Teachers Brigade, a local literacy nonprofit, to put retired teachers and other skilled tutors directly into classrooms to provide small-group instruction and support to Hathaway Elementary students. Interested in getting involved? Write us!
6.4.22 We got dirty in downtown Washougal. We were thrilled to bring a team of 13 volunteers to downtown Washougal on Saturday morning to help weed and tidy landscaped frontages and stormwater planters. The city did a great job of supervising and supporting us with gloves, tools, safety vests, and water. We look forward to doing more work with the city, especially in the fall, when ECCA is going to plant a new landscaped plot at the base of the Washougal River Road overpass (where the banners hang). We can’t wait!
5.21.22 Blackberries bite back. Trash cleanup volunteers helped push us over the 2,200-pound mark of litter collected from Rte. 14 between Washougal and Camas since March. As the blackberry bushes leaf out, the work becomes harder, but the eastbound lane is finally looking a bit better. The state Department of Transportation will begin picking up and disposing of our trash bags, which will make our work both easier and cheaper. Not shown in this photo but busy at work down the road was Barb, Rob, and Stephanie.
4.23.22. All plastic, everywhere. We worked in the Camas Slough area this weekend, westbound from the paper mill electric plant driveway to the first overpass. Our haul? 220 lbs. of everything from plastic bags to plastic plants to plastic Starbucks cups. Also, in keeping with a theme we’ve noticed from the beginning of our efforts in February, way too many plastic labels and tags from loads of lumber travelling down the road.
4.9.22. The litter never ends. We’ve been working every Saturday morning for a month, with mini-cleanups in between, and have collected more than 1,200 pounds of litter from the westbound side of Rte. 14 between Washougal and Camas. In the coming weeks, we will segue to the Camas Slough westbound area and the segment of road eastbound from Steamboat Landing.
3.5.22. The Great Rte. 14 Trash Cleanup has begun! The trash littering Rte. 14 finally got to us. By rights, this riverside highway into the Gorge should be lovely, but yet … well, we understand the state Department of Transportation has its hands full, and like many public agencies, it struggled with staffing and restrictions during the pandemic. We don’t want to throw around blame. On the other hand, we definitely think we deserve better. So, after feeling out every possibility for a formal coordination with local, county, or state entities, we opted to just pick up the trash ourselves. We researched and followed safety protocols, and on March 5th, did our first group clean-up, working on the westbound lane of Rte. 14 just down from the westernmost Washougal Rotary. The result? About 15 bags of trash and related detritus, all of which went to the dump. The best news is that more folks want to join us. Find out how to get involved here.
2.16.22. A little love for our local educators. In mid-February, we at ECCA decided the time was right to let the Washougal High School staff and faculty know that we appreciate them. (The Camas-Washougal Rotary Club had the same idea two days earlier, on Valentine’s Day. We love it!) The pandemic has been hard on students, no doubt about it. But it’s also been hard on schools, which have found themselves on the front lines of a public health crisis and had to adapt, pivot and just plain persist their way through it. Educators didn’t enjoy teaching via Zoom or wearing masks, but they didn’t have a choice. In good times or bad, it’s their job to regulate their emotions and model cooperative behavior for their students, and we appreciate them for doing it. Hats off!