By Chip Yost

Getting into Peppersauce cave isn't a cakewalk, but it isn't that difficult either. It's estimated thousands visit the cave every year, and leave the telltale signs to prove it.

Inside, the cave is full of graffiti and trash left behind by some of those people. With a grant of more than seventy thousand dollars from the state, the National Speleological Society is working to clean the graffiti and trash up. But it's too late to fix some of the other damage that's been done to formations that took thousands of years to create. Some of those formations have apparently been torn off by visitors looking for a souvenir. Others can be ruined simply by someone touching it with their skin.

Trash and human waste left behind has also affected the six pools of water inside the cave. Taran Doty, a project manager with the society, says tests of those pools have shown some of them contaminated with E.coli and other bacteria, which could have an impact well outside these walls. Doty says since some of the pools connect to some of the other underground water sources in the area, there's a chance some of the local water supplies could become contaminated. Part of this project will aim to clean those pools of water up before something like that happens.

Volunteers hope by the time the project is over, visitors will be more educated about how to treat the cave.

"This is an experiment to see if we can turn something around - we'll see," said Ray Keeler, another project manager with the society.

The society is still looking for volunteers or groups such as the Boy Scouts to help in this clean-up. If you would like information on how to volunteer, you can call Taran Doty at 480-633-7614. And, they'll need all the help they can get, since the workers on this project have agreed to provide more than 100,000 dollars worth of volunteer hours.