Durango’s annual treasure trove of trash, known as spring cleanup, is set to end mid-May after another year of growth.

“I think it’s a popular service,” said Levi Lloyd, Durango’s director of city operations. “There’s always a lot of material out.”

City crews picked up about 3,900 cubic yards of material as of Tuesday – enough to overfill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. By the time trash collection wraps up next week, city workers will have collected more than they did in 2019, 5,200 cubic yards of material. The program’s trash pile likely reached new heights this year because of increasing population and popularity – not necessarily residents doing cleaning during the stay-at-home order, Lloyd said.

“It’s just a good way to give citizens an opportunity to clean up,” he said.

During the cleanup, crews move through residential neighborhoods to pick up furniture, large appliances, scrap metal, drywall, fencing, carpeting and other materials. For the first time this year, the city extended the program from four weeks to five weeks.

The service is running a few days behind schedule. It was supposed to end Friday, but is now expected to wrap up Wednesday. Once crews pass by, they do not return, so people should not start new piles, Lloyd said.

As the program grows, so do the opportunities for Durangoans to find useful items in their neighbor’s trash.

“We always find interesting things. It’s amazing what people will put out in their spring cleaning,” Lloyd said.

In the past, crews have picked up canoes and acoustic guitars that were in fantastic shape, he said. They’ve seen the same lawn mowers crop up in different households year after year as residents find them, intend to fix them, then give up and put them back in the cleanup.

“I always joke that I want to put a tracker on a lawn mower to see where it ends up,” Lloyd said.

smullane@durangoherald.com