Garbage warrior runs the road

KINGMAN – A Golden Valley man has combined a workout with freelance community service.

Chris Murphy, a 70-old freelance writer for e-books and video scripts, has taken on the freewill task of cleaning up a section of Old Trails Road south of Kingman.

A few times a week, he drives to town with the motivation to run and wrangle the numerous items found along the road leading south out of town. He usually starts short of the first Santa Fe railroad bridge and jogs to the next bridge a little more than a mile down the road. Along the way, he finds everything from beer cans, bedsprings and bullet casings.

Murphy has been running the stretch since 2010 but got serious about picking up scattered garbage in April 2020.

“When I first started there was literally a ton of trash,” he said. “It took 22 bags to clean up all the garbage that had accumulated over the years.”

The effort started as fulfilling a community service requirement. The rest has been all-volunteer on his part and he’s since taken a clean-up run as often as he can during the week.

About five to 10 blue 50-gallon trash bags line the stretch each week.  Some are filled. Some have are not.

If you’ve been out on Old Trails Road lately, you’ve probably spotted those bags on the side of the road. It’s the only road Murphy focuses on (for now) and he picked the spot for its unending amount of trash.

“People throw a lot of garbage out there,” he said. “If I didn’t do this, there would be a bigger mess.”

Most of the garbage fits in the bags, but occasionally Murphy stumbles upon tires, mattresses and appliances.

“Cans are one thing,” he said. “Broken bottles and used syringes are quite another.”

The big items require additional resources for proper disposal and that’s where Environmental Rural Area Clean-up Enforcement (ERACE) comes in. ERACE falls under the Mohave County Public Works Department and communicates with Murphy to schedule bag pick-up.

“We’re supporting his work,” said Tom Davidson, ERACE Program Coordinator. “He’s doing community service and we’re happy he’s helping us.”

Mohave County has volunteer groups, mostly in Golden Valley and Dolan Springs. Kingman Cactus Cleaners is the biggest. Smaller groups help out in other areas. Depending on the project, ERACE provides trash bags, retrieves garbage from sites and will even cover the landfill costs.

“Our main goal is to go out after the illegal dumpers and prosecute them,” Davidson said. “We also assist with clean-up and education projects.”

And ERACE has been prosecuting – especially with the help of the public’s reporting of illegal dumping.

Shaun Dougherty, 41, of Kingman, was sentenced Dec. 4 to two years in prison after being convicted of criminal littering in a plea agreement for illegally dumping debris in the desert near Hackberry.

“If you dump in our desert, we’re going to find you and prosecute you,” Davidson said.

He added Murphy is the only person in Kingman consistently cleaning up trash for collection. Murphy couldn’t do it without ERACE.

“They are the real heroes by supplying and collecting those bags,” he said.

Davidson had no official numbers of bags that get picked up each week from that specific site. As of Dec. 29, there were five bags, some full, some with room for more refuse. There have been more spotted on other weeks.

Murphy would like to get the community involved – from elementary school on up – to educate and stir a sense of passion for the environment.

“If everybody in the community would spend just one day with me,” he said. “They would think twice about breaking that bottle and leaving it as an eyesore and health hazard along the road.”

The task never ends. There are always plenty of bags to fill. He started ten years ago with more than 20. There’s always more litter.

“If we stopped for just a couple of weeks we’d be right back at where I started,” Murphy said.

To report an illegal dumpsite, contact ERACE at 928-715-0480. For littering/dumping in progress, depending on the jurisdiction, contact either Mohave County Sheriff’s Office at 928-753-0753 or Kingman Police Department at 928-753-2191.

Aaron Ricca