The congregation of Turlock Covenant Church, along with staff from the City of Turlock’s Neighborhood Services Unit and Parks, Recreation, and Public Facilities went to work Saturday on a project to spruce up some of the alleys on Turlock’s Westside.

Dubbing themselves the Alley Cats, the project crew targeted the Westside alleys because they are often targets of illegal dumping and Saturday’s effort was no surprise. A total of 8.64 tons, or 17,280 pounds of debris and 11 abandoned shopping carts were collected during the cleanup project. This is the second clean up that the Alley Cats have held this year, with their last clean up totaling in with just over 7,000 pounds of garbage collected.

Neighborhoods that benefitted from this clean up were: South Ave., Vermont Ave., West Ave. South, Angelus St., Orange St., and S. Laurel St. This cleanup project benefits the neighborhoods by making sure there is good access for emergency vehicles to travel down these alleys, and removes any potentially harmful debris.

Turlock Scavenger helped in the efforts by allowing the Alley Cats to dump all the collected garbage for free.