Cleaning up the junk along the Mohawk
CLIFTON PARK — Each year on International Coastal Cleanup Day, Shenendehowa environmental science teacher Joanne Coons and some of her high school students head to the Mohawk River to remove garbage from its banks. They pick up every potato-chip bag and plastic fork, a lot of fishing lines and styrofoam worm containers and a large number of caps and lids for both cups and bottles. When they leave, the area around the Power Authority dam is litter free.
And the following year when they return on International Coastal Cleanup Day, which this year will be 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 19, they find the same amount of junk waiting to be picked up and hauled off.
On Saturday, Sept. 19, volunteers will remove trash from the Mohawk River bank near the New York Power Authority dam in Clifton Park.
When Coons led last fall’s cleanup, she was joined by 12 volunteers — including 10 students from her 11th- and 12th-grade classes. The high schoolers quickly were amazed by what and how much they found.
“They start getting into it. You’ll here, “Eeewww! Look what I found!” Then they want to find bigger and bigger things,” Coons said. “We’ve found bed springs, tires, TVs.”
The volunteers note everything they collect.
“It’s like being a citizen-scientist,” Coons said. “When we collect the garbage, we analyze it and report it.”
Those reports go to the Northeast chapter of the American Littoral Society, which compiles the data for the state and sends it on to the Ocean Conservancy. The advocacy group collects information from across the nation and around the world.
“That information is sent to members of Congress and different organizations,” chapter director Don Riepe said. “It’s used to show there is this grassroots effort concerned about beach pollution.”
In New York alone, 9,917 volunteers at 294 cleanup sites collected 168,856 pounds of trash last year. During the 2002 cleanup, the participants recorded a 2-to-1 ratio of nondeposit to deposit bottles in the beach litter.
“That’s part of the reason the bigger, better bottle bill was passed,” Coons said. “We had the data.”
The town of Clifton Park supports the cleanup by providing the trash bags and hauling away the garbage. Coons just needs the community to provide the volunteers. And the volunteers need to bring work gloves. There are incentives.
“I’m serving cookies,” Coons said, “and we have fun.”
But the biggest incentive is what’s left behind after a morning of picking up.
“When we leave on that Saturday morning and look back, it’s beautiful,” Coons said. “We really do make a difference.”
For more information:
- Mohawk Riverfront Cleanup, New York Power Authority Dam, Riverview and Sugarhill roads, Clifton Park, 9 a.m.-noon Saturday, Sept. 19
- American Littoral Society’s Northeast chapter
- International Coastal Cleanup Day
