Snowy Cleanup

Yours truly with one of my board members, Kathleen

Every year since 1970 when my conservancy was founded, we have sponsored a volunteer cleanup of the banks of the creek flowing through my preserve.  In fact, the cleanup is our organization's largest annual event, usually drawing upwards of 100 volunteers who spend two hours hunting for trash and who then return to the headquarters for lunch.

This year's cleanup was last Saturday, April 9.  As the date approached, the weather forecast quickly began to deteriorate, with calls for a wintry mix of wet snow turning to rain.  Yuck!

When I awoke on Saturday morning, the skies were overcast but there was no precipitation falling.  Would we be spared?  However, 45 minutes before the start of the event, I heard on the radio that snow was falling to our west and, sure enough, when I went out to help prepare, snow had moved into the area.

Nevertheless, we did not call off or postpone the event, and about 60 volunteers reported for duty.  I led my group down to the creek (a 10-minute walk), where we forded the stream to get to an island that is always a hotbed of trash.  This year was no exception.  The creek splits at the head of the island and floodwaters push all sorts of debris up onto the point where the stream divides.  Most of the flotsam is woody, but it also contains all the detritus of modern life - especially plastic bottles and polystyrene.

A "before" picture of trash embedded in woody debris (volunteer at right)

My group's most impressive finds included one natural item (a large, partially decomposed snapping turtle) and one unnatural (a mannequin's arm).

Over the 28 years I've helped with the creek cleanup, it's interesting to note that we hardly ever find aluminum cans any longer (formerly a significant part of the trash collected).  Are more people recycling, or are the cans valuable now?

We decided to call ourselves the Drowned Rats

In any case, though we were wet, all of us had a good, rewarding time despite the weather.  Cleaning up trash is really satisfying.

Creek Cleanup

Trash collected by Viridian Energy volunteers

We held our annual creek cleanup along "my" creek and several tributary streams last Saturday.  Despite showers on Friday, the streams were not particularly high on Saturday, and the day was sunny and temperatures were perfect - in the low 60s.

With over 100 individuals from Scouts, church groups, and companies volunteering at this event, we needed to spread the workforce over the landscape.  I took a group to a nearby municipal park where a tributary draining the main commercial hub for the region originates.  Because of the commercial activity in this stream's headwaters, we can always count on collecting plenty of trash on the floodplain.

Round Meadow Run, the tributary where I worked,  near its mouth

I had volunteers from Viridian Energy, an electric utility supplier in the region, and from Planet Aid, a non-profit organization that re-purposes and distributes donated clothing and housewares.

Viridian Energy volunteers

Because we have not had a major flood since August 2011 when Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee roared through the valley (2012's Hurricane Sandy caused tremendous wind damage, but did not produce much rain), there was not an inordinate amount of trash to collect.  Floods wash debris out of the watershed and deposit it on the floodplain, but this year we mostly collected routine stuff, especially plastic bottles and Styrofoam.

Round Meadow Run (foreground) joining "my" creek (right)

"My" creek is too large to ford easily, so volunteers from Planet Aid used a downed tree

The volunteers from Planet Aid discovered a dead beaver in the creek just upstream of the downed tree they used to gain access to the opposite shore.

Heading back for lunch

The three Planet Aid volunteers; it's not apparent in the image, but Dave (center) had fallen in the creek

Very pregnant Lavonne (left), our marketing guru, and Kali distributed t-shirts

Back at the Visitor Center, we treated the volunteers to lunch provided by Whole Foods, and we gave each volunteer a commemorative t-shirt.

Lunch in the picnic area

The creek cleanup, our biggest event of the year, is hectic and chaotic, but it's also our biggest "friend raiser."  We don't get that much trash out of the creek, but the event gets people familiar with us, and it makes the participants feel good about being able to do something to help the environment.