Hempstead Tpke gets royal treatment

Residents from across Elmont traded their costumes for rakes, brooms and shovels last Saturday morning, pitching in to help clean up Hempstead Turnpike.

The event, attended by more an estimated 125 people, was designed as a way for Elmont’s residents to take pride in their community, and help local business owners reach out and make contact with one another.

“We had a nice turnout,” said County Legislator John Ciotti, whose office helped to organize the event. “I think it means that the people in Elmont are involved, the people in Elmont care, and the people in Elmont do.”

Hempstead Turnpike was singled out both because it acts as Elmont’s main thoroughfare, and because several community groups are trying to highlight it as an area where local leaders encourage businesses to take root.

For the event, the more than 125 groups were broken into teams, and each team leader was given a few stretches of roadway — either by Belmont Park, or in front of Elmont’s downtown business district — to tend to. Once the teams had broken up and travelled their separate paths down Hempstead Turnpike, team members were given brooms, shovels, garbage bags and rakes to help them corral the hundreds of pounds of garbage and dead leaves that littered the area.

Downtown Elmont in particular has a reputation for being difficult to keep clean because of its many short-order restaurants and dollar stores — all of which tend to attract customers who are there to buy and drop the remainders of they purchases in the most convenient spot, which may not always be a garbage can.

Compounding matters, as Ciotti noted, is the fact that the Hempstead Turnpike corridor is a wind tunnel. Garbage in the area doesn’t always have to come from Elmont to find its way there.

“It’s a wind tunnel, things blow down the road and just end up there,” Ciotti said. “Some of the garbage even comes in from Queens.”