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Sunday, March 18, 2001

Volunteers clear trash from St. Johns basin

By IVONA LERMAN | News-Journal Environment Writer

DEBARY — Pink, white and yellow ponytail ribbons mingle with the trees Saturday as four girls run out from the woods up to the St. Johns River cleanup volunteer sign-up desk at Lake Monroe Park.

"We found a whole bathroom!" one of them shouts. "Can you imagine?"

Not waiting for the truck that will haul it away, they run back to the woods. Grabbing a heavy sink isn't easy, but they decide to take it to the garbage disposal.

"You've got to find your inner strength," says Alexandra Arroyo, a senior at Pine Ridge High School.

Luckily a Volusia County Environmental Management truck shows up before they get too far. "Yes!" they all shout. "Load it into the truck!"

That same kind of spirit could be found in Flagler County and up and down the river Saturday. The sixth annual cleanup and celebration took place in 15 Florida counties and two Georgia counties and was sponsored by St. Johns River Water Management District and Keep Florida Beautiful. In the last five years, more than 28,000 volunteers have collected more than 2 million pounds of trash from north and east-central Florida waterways as part of this project.

After the truck is gone, the girls walk deeper into the woods following the flow of the river.

"How can people just go in there and dump their bathroom?" asks Heather Parker, also a senior at Pine Ridge, her dark ponytail swinging from side to side as she kneels down to pick up more trash.

As the girls walk, they stop to pick up beer bottles, cans and cigarette butts, loading them into one of their red trash bags. "Oh, stinky," one of them says as their bags get heavier and their foreheads sweatier.

The oldest among the four and a freshman at Stetson University, Brooke Saari, stops on occasion to recall what she found as a Pine Ridge student at the same spot last year and the year before.

"We found two phone booths and a newspaper dispenser two years ago," she says. Last year, there was a big rusted pipe that took six people to carry, she recalls.

As they get deeper into the park, other cleanup volunteers pop out from trees and side roads. Boy Scout troops, college students, parents and even 4-year-olds in oversized river cleanup shirts all carry trash in one form or the other.

"Being here today makes me realize that every little piece of trash does make a difference," says Danielle Cortese, a sophomore at Daytona Beach Community College and a member of Phi Theta Kappa. "After seeing how much effort goes into picking up every single piece of trash, I'm not going to litter for a long time."

Lisa Bush, environmental project coordinator for Volusia County, adds up all the trash bags and volunteers. The grand total comes to 38,090 pounds of trash collected at six sites in Volusia County by a total of 280 volunteers.

That's about 6,000 pounds more than collected in Volusia last year, she says.

In Volusia this year the organizers were particularly satisfied with children. "There were more kids than ever," Bush says.

Slightly more than a hundred volunteers showed up at Flagler County sites.

Flagler County volunteers gathered more than a metric ton of garbage from 10 areas, ranging from the Intracoastal Waterway on the east side to the streams and lakes that feed the St. Johns on the west, according to Malissa Dillon, a spokeswoman for the St. Johns River Water Management District.

Peter Colgan, coordinator of the Flagler County Watershed Action Volunteers, said Flagler volunteers found less trash than they did last year.

"So it appears to me that it is doing some good," he said.

The most surprising find in Florida was six dumpsters worth of railroad ties found dumped in tributaries of the St. Johns in Alachua County, Dillon said.

That find largely contributed to the program bringing in 227 tons of waste overall on Saturday, 32 more tons of trash than was collected during last year's cleanup, she said.

Staff Writer Daniel Lathrop contributed to this report.

HICI Special Report — Volunteerism: The Gift of Time

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