BY VINAYA SAKSENA

CUMBERLAND — The Blackstone Valley area has earned a distinction that no other part of Rhode Island has, according to a non-profit environmental advocacy group.

On Thursday, local government officials joined local and regional representatives of Keep America Beautiful (KAB) at the Blackstone Valley Theater, where the officials formally accepted a certificate declaring a group of nine communities their only certified affiliate in Rhode Island. The official KAB affiliate status applies to the communities of Pawtucket, Cumberland, Central Falls, Woonsocket, Smithfield, North Smithfield, Lincoln, Burrillville and Glocester.
Keep America Beautiful is a national non-profit organization working to reduce litter, graffiti and other visual blights in communities across the country, in an attempt to maintain both environmental cleanliness and scenic beauty.
The organization’s local work will be done by Keep Blackstone Valley Beautiful (KBVB), which calls itself “the environmental education arm of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council.”
“We’re all trying to do the same thing, which is educate and involve citizens in a cleaner environment,” said April
Wennerstrom, Director of Affiliate Services for KAB. “I think the biggest (goal) is to really engage the community in an effort for more individual responsibility.”
Mayors James Doyle of Pawtucket and Daniel McKee of Cumberland were on hand for the event and both hailed the new affiliate status as a sign of positive change in the area. McKee mentioned, for example, the pride taken by residents of Valley Falls and other neighborhoods in the condition of the area.
“They have a great deal of pride in Valley Falls,” McKee said. “And I think it is very important that we respond to that.”
“(This) was the result of the hard work and dedication of the people of the Blackstone Valley,” Doyle said. “What this foretells, I think, is that we have a very, very bright future.”
The effort to have a local Keep America Beautiful affiliate in the area was spearheaded by Blackstone Valley Tourism Council President Robert Billington, beginning in 2002. Billington, who was unable to attend Thursday’s event, apparently became interested in the idea after leading a major trash cleanup effort near the Blackstone River, where extensive amounts of trash were found. He had begun to feel that the key to solving the area’s litter problems was not to simply pick up trash, but to make sure it never got thrown on the ground in the first place. Billington’s efforts led to foster a relationship with KAB resulted in KAB officials coming to the area to confer with him on research he had done in 2002, with pre-certification for the area taking place four years later. Now, an official KBVB website has been launched (at www.keepblackstonevalleybeatiful.com), and the organization has picked a coordinator in Emily Soergel, a recent graduate of the University of Florida, where Broad Street Initiative Coordinator Alex Sommer was also a student.
Soergel, a Florida native, majored in anthropology with a focus on human environmental relationships, and came to the Blackstone Valley earlier this year, in time for the area’s participation in the Great American Cleanup, a large nationwide trash and debris pick-up effort. She came to the area as a member of AmeriCorps Vista, which sponsors her new position.
Soergel, who previously worked for the Pawtucket Foundation, said she had wanted to work in a service-oriented job, and found KBVB an attractive option. She added that she looked forward to seeing what could be done in the area, as did others involved in the effort.
“This is very exciting,” Soergel said. “We’ve been working to become affiliated for the last six years. We all share a common goal of cleaning up the Blackstone Valley.”