MAN — The Logan County Commission's free trash pickup has already helped clear the county of several hundred tons of trash and debris.

Last weekend, the cleanup, which allows Logan County residents to bring their trash in to a site to be dumped for free, netted 714 tons in the first three days.

"That's 1,400,000 pounds of garbage that equaled 79 tractor trailer loads of trash that we hauled off," Logan County Administrator Roscoe "Rocky" Adkins said this morning. "The Logan County Commission believes its newly-adopted cleanup ordinance has already caused the growth in the amount of trash we've collected so far. And that's exactly what we were hoping for."

The commission's trash pickup event is in its third year. Last year, according to official figures, the cleanup netted 2 million pounds of trash and this year, it looks like that mark will be surpassed.

Logan County Commission President Art Kirkendoll said the trash cleanup effort is a way to make Logan County more beautiful for its residents and the tourists who come to the county to ride the trails.

"This is going to be more successful than we dreamed," Kirkendoll said. "I think people are thankful for the ordinance we passed where we are going to be going after eyesores and dilapidated dwellings and I think some people are knocking down what they can right now and we're getting some extra cleanup work out of that. We're way ahead of schedule on the poundage.

"The first cleanup, we shipped out 1.3 million pounds. The second cleanup, last year, we shipped out 2 million pounds. Man's cleanup will be big."

Kirkendoll said he plans to ask the state for more money and the county commission may be able to find some extra funding to ensure the program continues.

"If we can ship 3 or 4 million pounds of debris out of this county, then that would be great," Kirkendoll said.

The commission president said the ordinance is already in effect and people will be going around identifying all dilapidated dwellings in the county and the owners will be identified through the mapping in the Logan County assessor's office.

"We'll let them know they are out of compliance and give them a period of time to talk to us or to knock them down and, if they don't, then we will go in and start knocking them down and making some kind of financial arrangement with the land owner to either auction it off or to have someone buy it," Kirkendoll said. "There's a lot of ways we can do this, but the main thing is that we have to get them out of here."

The first weekend of the cleanup was held in Logan near Baisden Brothers and this weekend it is in Man at the old Man Hospital location.

All of the cleanups will open each morning at 8 a.m. and will close at 6 p.m. daily.

The cleanup will then move to Chapmanville at the Rock Quarry starting on July 23 and running through July 25.

The cleanup then returns to Logan on July 30 and will close on August 1, again at the vacant lot beside Baisden Brothers. The county commission has held the cleanup for the last two years, taking in hundreds of tons of garbage and debris in an effort to clean trash from communities in Logan County.

For more information, call the Logan County Commission at 304-792-8626.