Volunteers clean up Udalls Cove

For 82 years, Arthur Kelly has lived in Douglas Manor, and for much of that time, he has helped to keep the beachfront bordering the Little Neck Bay clean.
“I’m one of the original people. I’ve lived here all of my life,” he said, explaining why he was scouring the sand for pieces of glass with his bare hands on Saturday, April 21.
As about 100 volunteers gathered and cleaned the other side of the Douglaston peninsula as part of the 37th annual Udalls Cove cleanup, Kelly instead opted to clean the beach. He said he had an ulterior motive for his efforts.
“Once per week, I come and check the beach. I find things like bottle caps, plastic bags, and who knows what,” he said.
Kelly voluntarily takes charge of a 200-foot stretch of beachfront, and he sends in his findings to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) once per week.
“That’s why I came out today,” he said. “When I come back in one week, two weeks, three weeks, I know what just landed here.”
On the other side of the peninsula - at Udalls Cove - members of the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee (UCPC) and other volunteers gathered empty plastic bottles and other garbage from the water and shorefront. In total, the group collected more than 40 cubic yards of trash and planted more than 500 tree seedlings - from species indigenous to northeast Queens like oaks, hickories, maples, beeches and birches - said UCPC President Walter Mugdan.
“We had a good turnout, people were energetic, and they really worked hard for a few hours,” Mugdan said.
As a reward for their efforts, volunteers ate 15 feet worth of hero sandwiches after the cleanup.
State Senator Frank Padavan, also visited volunteers to announce he had secured $20,000 for the UCPC. Last year, Padavan’s grant and matching money from Councilmember Tony Avella was used to build a new guardrail along Sandhill Road, replacing a railing made of salvaged telephone polls that the UCPC installed 35 years ago. Although the group has a number of projects on their “to-do list,” Mugdan said that the UCPC has not figured out how they will use the new money yet.