Clearing Area above BART Trail and Planting Oak Trees Jay Breitzman,  Troop 132, Fremont

My Eagle project helped create a cleaner and safer environment for the visitors at Tyson lagoon.  I constructed a pathway that is convenient and safe for the many visitors that attend Tyson lagoon.  The field work was completed in two work days, the total number of collective hours spent on the project including preplanning were 104 hours.

trail full of brush	taking a break from removing tree limbs

I spent quite a bit of time with preplanning.  All the time I took writing the project, planning it out, revising it, and riding my bike over to meet Dr. Blueford several times counted up to 23 hours. The rest (81) was the actual labor, carrying out the project.  The first work day was on July 26^th.  The work crew was a total of ten people.  I went over safety in handling the tools first, and then I appointed who in the work crew was doing what.  During this session of the project we cleared out all the dead coyote brush and trees that my dad and I had quickly cut down before everyone arrived. To clear the brush out I had some of the work crew, which were the older scouts, do the hand sawing while the younger scouts dragged them to the designated pile to later be chipped by the city.  We saved some logs that were big enough to make the retaining wall for the trail.  We started at 9 a.m. and with a half hour lunch break we finished at 1:30 p.m.  Every thing went as planned in fact a little bit ahead of schedule.  I didn’t expect to get it all done so soon.  So the first session worked out great. 

cutting trail	bringing in the wood chips

Now that the dead brush was out of the way the next task to be done was to level out the dirt for the path.  This task was performed on the next work day which was on Aug 9^th.  Thirteen people attended this work day.  At this session of my project we didn’t use any dangerous tools so there was no need to go over safety instructions, the only tools that we used were wheel barrows and shovels.  The plan was to lay down the logs that we saved for the retaining wall first, and make them secure then cut away at the sloping end of the trail and fill the area around the logs with that dirt. And that is just what we did. We started at 9 a.m. again and we were able to lay down the retaining wall, secure them, and level the ground fairly quickly.  Once that was done I had 4 workers create a convoy of wheel barrows full of mulch to dump and the rest of the work party waiting to spread it out this system worked out great and laying down mulch was the last task to do.  Once that was done we put all the tools that we used away and I got the approval from Dr. Blueford that I was finished I gave her the key to the gate and I took the final pictures and it was complete.

Finished trail

            I owe many thanks to many people and there contributions, thank you to all scouts and parents from troop 132 who contributed in their labor: Ben, Will and Alex Rich, Michael and Peter Dutton, Jimmy Floreck, Venkataram Tamirisa and Vasu Apperao, Brendan Gallagher, and Avinash Shah.  I would also like to thank members of my family for contributing with their advice and in helping with the driving and bringing lunch for the work crew and also in labor: Lee Breitzman (dad), Debra Breitzman (mom), Villu Ingver (step-dad) Brett Breitzman, and Tyler Dorso.  And of course my scout master T.C. Noble for his input and advice. Lastly I would like to thank Dr. Joyce Blueford for letting me do my project at Tyson Lagoon.  Thank you, again to all who helped make it possible.