Pine Level volunteers, Autauga PALS lead spring cleanup effort

Pine Level’s spring cleanup started at the Pine Level Community Center with volunteers gathering at 8 a.m. and Autauga PALS handing out supplies for the morning’s work. Caleb Bontrager, a town citizen who served as event coordinator, helped guide the effort as residents took on the upkeep of streets and public spaces.

Mayor Bigley publicly thanked Bontrager for stepping up and helping ensure the Spring Clean Up succeeded. That kind of recognition underscored how much the event depended on local ownership, not just routine town maintenance. In Pine Level, the cleanup was treated as a community job, with residents and partner groups helping keep the town looking cared for and open for daily use.

The Pine Level effort fit into Autauga County’s broader spring cleanup campaign, which ran throughout April and invited residents, businesses, schools, churches, civic groups, teams and families to take part. Autauga County’s calendar listed the Pine Level Community Wide Spring Clean Up Event with Autauga PALS at the community center from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., placing the town’s work inside a countywide push against litter and roadside dumping.

Autauga PALS describes itself as a local chapter of Alabama PALS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on anti-litter programs and cleaner, more beautiful communities. That mission has practical consequences. ALDOT has framed its Spring Clean efforts as roadway-litter removal tied to cleaner roads and community pride, a reminder that litter pickup is about more than appearance. It affects how people move through town, how visitors see Pine Level, and how long clean stretches of roadway stay that way before trash builds back up.

The scale of the work is not small. In Billingsley, another spring cleanup in the county drew more than 30 volunteers and removed about 60 bags of trash, or roughly 1,000 pounds of litter, including tires, car parts and grill debris. That kind of haul shows what can collect along roadsides and in public areas when cleanup is delayed, and why steady volunteer effort matters in smaller towns like Pine Level.

For Pine Level, the morning at the community center was more than a single cleanup. It was a reminder that keeping public spaces in shape takes coordination, supplies, and residents willing to show up before the trash becomes part of the landscape again.