Vermont's scenic Black River, beloved by fly fishermen, begins in Plymouth and rushes south for 41 miles through Windsor County villages, recreational lakes and a dramatic gorge until it finally joins up with the mighty Connecticut River at a place called Hoyt's Landing. I got to know this popular little boat landing and fishing spot up close and personal when I participated in the fifteenth annual Black River Action Team River Sweep this September.
As I waded through brush and shoreline reeds to collect all manner of garbage, I was surprised to find soda cans, plastic bait containers and food wrappings jammed tightly inside hollow tree trunks near the fishing dock - seems like it would have been easier just to take all that trash home.
More than a hundred folks showed up that day, wearing work clothes, hats and rubber boots. We ranged in age from 3 to 77 - including a football team, Boy Scouts, athletic coaches, Rotarians, people doing community service, retirees, teenagers and diehard environmentalists.
Organizer Kelly Stettner steers the nonprofit that promotes stewardship of the Black River. Her teenage daughter, equally committed to the cause, donned goggles and fins and scoured the bottom to loosen some of the seventy tires extracted from the river that day. Others went out in kayaks and canoes to retrieve rusty shopping carts, broken furniture, car parts and countless bottles and cans. By midday, we’d collected more than a thousand pounds of trash and nearly 800 pounds of scrap metal.
At noon everyone was ready for hot dogs and the Junk Jam, a percussion event that turns discards into instruments before they end up at the transfer station. A handful of kids and grownups banged sticks on shopping carts, rusty folding chairs and a car jack with inspired frenzy next to a human-sized plastic potted palm that had been fished from the river. Who knew river trash could be such fun?
I confess that I had some angry moments while dragging from the river trash that never should have been there in the first place. Sure, the snow shovels, bed frames and twisted bicycles could have been leftovers from Tropical Storm Irene. And the vending machine full of plastic trolls that surfaced a few years ago in a previous cleanup got a pass because it was just too comically bizarre. But all the bottles, cans, old shoes, broken toys, gum wrappers and thousands of cigarette butts never should have touched the water.
Research conducted by the national nonprofit Keep America Beautiful indicates that 81% of litter is intentional, like tossing things out of car windows and leaving trash behind from recreational activities. Some folks just don’t care and assume that someone else will pick up after them.
And fifteen times, the Black River Action Team and their volunteers have done just that.
