National River Cleanup Kickoff on the Anacostia

Posted on June 3, 2008 | Filed Under Cleanup, Mid-Atlantic 

Josh 2 Josh Klein
National River Cleanup Coordinator

This past Sunday American Rivers hosted our National River Cleanup Kickoff on the Anacostia in Riverdale Park, MD on the Anacostia River. It was a terrific and very effective event that drew more than 150 out to the River from all across the DC metro area.

I want to especially thank the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital and the 90 scouts and scout leaders from the eleven area troops that pitched in (I warned you girls about snakes!!!) and to Tom’s of Maine for their continued support and particularly Doug with Tom’s for coming out and lending a hand this weekend. I also want to thank Bagel Place of College Park for donating food, and the Anacostia Watershed Society and WUSA 9 News Now for helping spread the word and drawing attention to our event.

100_0897The Park Ranger with PG Parks and Recreation, John Dillon, who was on site and was a great help with our cleanup estimated that we collected more than 230 bags of trash. That’s incredible! Some other interesting items that were pulled out of the river were seven bicycles, a satellite dish, power tools, car stereo equipment, an entire rear fender to a car, and lot of scrap aluminum, metal and fencing material. As we were wrapping up Riverdale Park City Council member David Lingua (Ward 3) arrived to thank us for our work and encouraged us to come out again anytime to organize another cleanup.

Thank you to everyone who participated in making this a successful event. While this was a relatively large scale event, I want to encourage everyone to organize your own cleanups in your neighborhoods and communities. A river, creek or stream cleanup doesn’t need a lot of people, corporate sponsors or media attention to be a success.

All you need is a river, a few friends and family and a can do spirit to get out there and cleanup your precious local water resources and American Rivers is here to help. Organize your own cleanup today.

I also want to acknowledge all the other clean up’s taking place around the country this week during the official kickoff week for National River Cleanup and thank you for all of the photos and emails reporting back to American Rivers the success of your efforts. Keep’em coming!

View all of the photos from the cleanup.

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Comments

2 Responses to “National River Cleanup Kickoff on the Anacostia”

  1. Betty on June 3rd, 2008 8:47 pm

    Hi, I would like to clean up an area on the Rappahannock river, near Urbanna. There is a large commercial ice chest that has washed onto the beach. How do you find someone that can remove it? If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks, Betty

  2. Josh K. on June 4th, 2008 9:51 am

    You find some crazy junk when you do a River Cleanup. My recommendation would be to contact the Middlesex County Waste Management Authority. You may get bounced around to a number of different people before the bureaucrats on the other end of the line figure out who exactly you need to talk to but be persistent. Also if this large item is on private land be sure to work with the land owner - even if the junk isn’t theirs. Our Organizers Handbook covers a lot of this. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

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