Saugus Citizens in Action – Town Meeting member organizes a small work party to clean up abandoned homeless camp on dead-end road

By Mark E. Vogler

Precinct 2 Town Meeting Member Robert J. Camuso, Sr. said he recently noticed that a homeless camp at the end of Eustis Road appeared to be abandoned, leaving behind a mess that posed a public safety hazard. “The camp has been there roughly two years until recently. It appeared vacant when I was checking out the area and noticed it hasn’t changed in about a month, so I assumed the occupants moved on,” Camuso told The Saugus Advocate this week.

“I figured seeing the trash, drug paraphernalia and overall situation it would be a good idea to clean this area up to improve the area – and for safety reasons if small neighbors’ kids get into it playing and get stuck by a needle or injured,” he said.

Camuso reached out for help on his “Anything in our Town of Saugus Massachusetts” web page. Selectman Anthony Cogliano saw the post on Camuso’s social media page and offered to help. Leo Getz, the owner of Junkster Bags, offered his business services free of charge. Camuso led a work crew of six to the abandoned camp last week (Nov. 14).

“Friday morning, we all met up bright and early – rakes and shovels in hand – and quickly cleaned up the area and dragged the Junkster bags out of the wooded area where Leo’s truck was there to load everything up for a trip to [WIN] Waste to dump it,” Camuso said.

“I’m hoping this will catch on with Saugus neighborhoods. The power of volunteer work on getting this cleaned up made an eyesore area return back to its original look of natural woodlands. Everyone working together, the whole cleanup only took 30 to 45 minutes. It was great to see Selectman Anthony Cogliano and business owner Leo Getz (Junkster Bags) volunteering their time and business costs to get this area totally cleaned up,” he said. “It would be great to see more of this around our community. There’s already talk of another cleanup in another part of town after they saw this cleanup take place on social media. When you care about our community good things happen. Thank you to everyone for helping out. Let’s make this [an] ongoing community wide event with volunteers and elected officials that care. Sachem Pride!”

Camuso said he wishes cleanups like this would become a regular weekend event where “residents go to places around Saugus to clean up areas like this one.”