Volunteers will complete the environmental improvement projects that Houston 2012 is planning. The Olympic group has been very successful at tapping into volunteerism. They have hundreds of people signed up to do things in support of the Houston bid for the Olympics. Houston 2012 has already rallied those volunteers. In a recent project, the group organized local Boy Scouts to plant trees in the Sunset Trail area.
Planners expect to complete up to five similar projects in the coming months.
The USOC will visit the projects when they come to Houston in 2001 as part of the selection process. In the early 90s, a volunteer project to plant two million trees in the area was successful, and is seen as a model for other large-scale initiatives. Opportunity comes with responsibility. Although Mary Ellen Whitworth of the Bayou Preservation Association is pleased that the focus of the Games will be Houston's bayous, she warns that environmental organizations need to be on their toes. Whitworth has some reservations about the direct impact of the Olympics as well.