May 13, 2013 in News

Shoreline clean-up yields boatloads of trash

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riversweep
Volunteers filled two boatloads of trash

The Lighthouse peninsula is a lot cleaner after our Saturday morning river sweep. Eighteen volunteers spent over two hours along the jetty picking up debris washed ashore by recent floods. Plastic, styrofoam and other flotsam filled fifty garbage bags. Our supply barge served as a floating trash hauler, delivering two mounded boatloads to the Coast Guard station. The garbage filled a Public Works dump-truck and then some. The largest single piece of waste: an abandoned heating oil tank carried in by superstorm Sandy.

Thanks from the Saugerties Lighthouse Conservancy to all those who made this clean-up possible: to Riverkeeper for helping to organize the event and supplying trash bags, to the Coast Guard for allowing us to unload trash at their pier, to the Village of Saugerties Department of Public Works for hauling away the trash, to the Platte Clove Bruderhof community for sending a team of hard-workers, and to all the volunteers who braved the muck on Saturday morning.

The shoreline sweep was helped along by previous clean-up efforts this spring. The Catskill Mountain Canoes, a local Girl Scout canoe racing team, took the initiative and paddled out on May 1st to collect trash along the jetties at the mouth of the creek. On Earth Day in April, fourth graders from Cahill Elementary School walked to the Lighthouse and picked up trash along the trail. Special thanks goes out to these two groups for their part in tidying up the area.




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