Community thrives when people work together. That’s the goal of community civic groups when they come together to make an impact. On Saturday, March 9, community members met to clean up Rotary Lake in west Great Bend. Formerly MacArthur Lake, Rotary Lake is located south of 10th Street between Eisenhower Ave. and MacArthur Rd. on Seventh Street.

A group of more than 30 people braved the morning cold to help make one of the city parks look a little more inviting.

Members from Rotary Club, Boy Scouts, the “Damn It, Do it GBK” crew, and people just wanting to volunteer, picked up just shy of a half ton of trash and waste from the area around Rotary Lake in less than two hours. “It just needed done. So we did it.” said Ryan Fairchild, “Damn it, Do It GBK” organizer. “It was a great turnout. We were hoping that if we’d get 10 people, it’d be great.”

Rotary motivates community

From car parts and beer bottles, to fast food waste and aluminum cans and anything else people or the wind blows in, volunteers filled trash bags and buckets and pickup beds and then loaded the trash on to a trailer that Fairchild pulled to the landfill.

In February 2018, the Great Bend Rotary Club adopted the lake in hopes of making it a more popular attraction and an integral part of the city’s park system. Great Bend City council approved changing the lake’s name to Rotary Lake.

Improvements from donations contributed by the Rotary Club have included a concrete slab with picnic tables and a grill, with future plans of putting in some lighting and more permanent trash cans.

In 2022 local cyclists approached the City council and proposed a bike and hiking trail around the lake. They met with the Public Lands Director and the former City Administrator and offered to create the trails at no cost to the city.

The area has a history of undesirable type activities and the goal of the improvements and trails are to help deter some of those unpleasant deeds.

"Jake (Morris) came to me and said, hey, you know, we really need to get this cleaned up out there before cycling season really hits,” Fairchild said. “Him and Todd (Van Skyke), put in a lot of work back here helping to create this trail back here. These trails don’t just exist, somebody has to create them.”

“They’ve always done a really great job of being the eyes for the cyclists to give them something really awesome and cool to do. And they’ve given us some really awesome spots,” Fairchild continued. “They take care of Lake Barton trails as well. They’re a big reason why that is so nice out there.”

Rotary Club provided donuts at the event, Perks Coffee Shop donated coffee, and “Damn It, Do It GBK” provided trash bags, gloves, and hauled the trash to the landfill.

Damn It, Do It GBK” has T-shirts available for sale to help raise funds for buying trash bags and paying landfill costs.

A total 940 pounds of waste was the final number listed on the ticket from the landfill.