Oscar the Grouch would have had a field day.

Instead, a group of volunteers spent hours removing hundreds of pounds of trash from a sinkhole in Southwest Alachua County.

Tv20's Landon Harrar hiked to the sinkhole located on gopher tortoise protected land to show us how much trash still remains and how much volunteers were able to remove in 4 hours.

The goal of the non-profit organization called "Current Problems" is to preserve and protect North Central Florida's water resources for the enjoyment of humans and wildlife. They accomplish this goal by gathering volunteers, putting on some gloves and picking up trash. They were specifically asked by Alachua County Environmental Protection for their help to clean up this sinkhole.

Removing trash from sinkholes isn't easy work by any sense of the phrase but its work which needs to be done explains Current Problems executive director Megan Black.

"Sinkholes are basically an entry to our aquifers for our water so all the water going into a sinkhole becomes our drinking water. So if there's trash in the sinkhole it's leeching into our drinking water."

Jenny Benson volunteered to help with the cleanup and describes some of what they found in the hole. "It was pretty full of garbage, not the worst I've seen but full of large debris, large metal bits, and pieces. Lots of tires, old bottles, pretty much everywhere you looked you saw something not natural to the environment."

With 9 volunteers working through the summer heat and rain an estimated 1500-2000 pounds of trash was removed said, Black.

"It's so rewarding after feeling some anger towards people who dump trash it's really rewarding to see it come out and the end results and know that trash is going away for good and we won't have to deal with it anymore in these beautiful areas."

Black says she expects they'll need to come back 2 or 3 more times to get rid of the rest which has been covered by soil after decades of just sitting. Current Problems holds multiple cleanup style events every year in North Central Florida when the need arises.

"We have several annual cleanups that go on every year and we try and have cleanups as often as possible but there's really no rhyme or reason to the amount we have. It's just when we get a call or are notified by someone there's a problem we put a plan in place to fix it."

Much of what's left in the sinkhole is roofing material like shingles which will be difficult to remove because they break apart in your hands. Black says she estimates some of the trash has been in the sinkhole for 50 years after finding dated items including farm equipment and old coke cans. There is no return trip to the hole scheduled yet.