STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Elizabeth Jeffrey has a dream of Fix It Clinics taking place throughout the year in the Wood River Valley.

That dream will start with the Fix It Clinic at Saturday’s Earth Day Festival in Hailey.

“We’re trying to have the Fix It Clinics be more than an annual event,” said Jeffrey, who organizes the Earth Day Festival. “We’re looking at another in fall in Bellevue. It would be at the Building Material Thrift Store and would focus on fixing appliances and home repairs.

This man was fixing electrical appliances.

“And in winter we’d like to have one in Ketchum that would include ski repair and waxing and other winter-related things. Maybe we can expand so we can talk about energy efficient transportation in Bellevue and the energy efficiency of our homes in Ketchum.”

Fix It Clinics, introduced a couple years ago at Hailey’s Earth Day Festival, fits with the local Climate Action Coalition’s efforts to get people thinking about the circulatory idea of reducing, reusing and repurposing.

Those attending this year’s festival can bring lamps and toasters that need fixing, end tables and other wooden furniture that need a leg replaced and winter coats and other clothing in need of an attractive patch.

New this year is a tech guru who is starting a business in 3D printing and can bring micro soldering and motherboards to the table.

Someone who can sharpen knives and tools is always handy.

The fifth annual Earth Day Fest will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 25, outside the Hailey Public Library at Croy and Main streets.

It will kick off with an Earth Day 5K Run/Walk and will include Eco-Circularity activities offered by more than 20 local community groups. Teens will show off upcycled fashions they created for an Earth Day Thrift Fashion Show at Hailey Town Center West that begins with refreshments at 5 p.m. before the runway strutting begins at 5:30 p.m.

The Earth Day 5K registration will start at 9 a.m. and the race at 10 a.m. Runners and walkers will leave from the alley way between the library and Hailey Town Center West following a route through the neighborhoods south of Croy and west of River and Broadford Road.

The entry fee is $20 for adults, $10 for students and free for children under 12. Earth Day costumes are encouraged. And winners will receive “First Chair” T-shirts created by members of the Wood River High School’s Environmental Club using repurposed clowthing from The Attic.

It was unclear whether the youngster was the one offering computer help or the man.

The prizes are patterned after the First Chair T’s that Sun Valley Resort gives those who catch the first chair up Baldy on the first day of the ski season.

Shoppers can look for thrifty treasures at a Trunk Sale, a gathering of car-sized yard sales in one location.

There will be some hands-on activities courtesy of Sun Valley Museum of Art teachers who were a hit last year showing youngsters how to turn corrugated cardboard into 3D airplanes and dinosaurs.

Bloom Truck will serve Thai soup, a Vietnamese sandwich and other Asian-influenced dishes while Lago Azul will bring a South American flair to the food. Both will serve dessert in response to attendees saying they wanted sweets.

The Hailey Library will have an exhibit of student art, and there will be live music.

Attendees can also have dull cutlery and garden tools sharpened at the Fix-It Clinic free of charge. Volunteers will be on hand to patch outdoor gear tents, backpacks, ski clothes and torn clothing, while getting tech support for computers and phones.

Repairing and repurposing items can cut Co2 emissions involved with the manufacturing and transport of new products, helping with climate chance, Jeffrey said: “We’re already a community tied into circularity because we’re so rural and isolated. We buy our clothes from thrift stores, our furniture from thrift stores.”

The first Earth Day was founded 56 years ago in 1970 in response to a huge oil spill off the coast of California that demonstrated the urgency of responding to environmental challenges. More than 200 countries now celebrate it as a way to bring awareness to the planet’s health.

Taking care of Mother Earth is more important than ever, Jeffrey said, when you see wildfires burning in Florida, Colorado and Nebraska in March, 110-degree temperatures out of season in Arizona and Iranians having to abandon their homes even before the bombings because they were running out of water.

“It’s a frightening situation—science fiction kinds of things,” she said. “We don’t pay enough attention to how serious it is because we can get by when it’s 70 degrees in April--we forget what it means globally and how it will ultimately affect our food prices, our medicine… Millions will be at home because there’s no food, no water and it’s too hot to be outside. Japan is already making up a term for when it’s over 104 degrees and people under or over certain ages should not be outside.”

Jeffrey said she has been encouraged that Hailey Planning and Zoning seems to be taking the impact of climate change seriously in its decisions.

“We can only live here as long as it’s safe to live here. Millions of people will be moving as it grows too hot elsewhere and this will be one of the places they move to. We have to ask: When do we run out of water? How do we control our growth so we have enough water even in drought years? These are very tough decisions the city—and the state and the country--are going to have to plan for.”

Jeffrey’s hope that people can discuss such issues while they’re watching someone sharpen their blade or showing them how to fix a broken fan. She recently took part in a dinner where participants went around the table asking: What am I afraid of and what can I do?

“It was a very interesting experience,” she said. “Even people who haven’t shown any signs of deep concern were questioning: What are we going to do without a snow pack? How high is our aquifer? How many more developments can we support? One woman said, ‘I was afraid this would be hard to talk about but it was actually very nice.’ ”

Want to know more? Contact Elizabeth Jeffrey at hcac2031@gmail.com or visit the Climate Action Coalition at www.cacwrv.org.