Grassroots River Cleanup Yields 162 Tons in 3 Hours

Jennifer Vernon
For National Geographic News

May 10, 2004

Last month some 3,500 volunteers in West Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., collected 162 tons of trash
from the Potomac River watershed in just three hours.

To put that figure in perspective: One hundred and sixty-two tons is roughly the weight of 30 school buses. If the trash were lined end to end, it would stretch over three miles (five kilometers).

The volunteers were participating in the 16th Potomac River Watershed Cleanup, a yearly effort hosted by the Alice Ferguson Foundation that seeks to stem the tide of Potomac trash.

Organizers say the cleanup's success comes with mixed emotions.

"For an event like this, you measure your success based on how much trash you get out of the river, how many volunteers you can engage," said Tracy Bowen, executive director of the Accokeek, Maryland-based nonprofit. "But at the same time, it's bittersweet that we can actually, in three hours, pull out so much trash."

Watershed Issue

Many conservation organizations, including the Alice Ferguson Foundation, point out that water pollution is a problem not confined to a single river or stream but the product of pollution throughout a watershed—the region that feeds into a river, including its tributaries.

The Potomac River watershed encompasses an area of 14,679 square miles (38,018 square kilometers) across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. With its source in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, the waterway ends in the Chesapeake Bay. The river is the bay's second largest tributary.

Bowen notes that much of the trash that volunteers collect during the annual Potomac cleanup may not have been originally dropped into the river. Rather, the trash typically reaches the river's shores via storm-drain runoff from urban and suburban areas. Raising awareness in communities within the watershed (population: 5.2 million), therefore, is an important part of the Alice Ferguson Foundation's educational outreach efforts.

"We like to work with communities that are connected to the river through storm drains and through their flow systems," Bowen said. "All of us are connected to the river, even if we're not directly close to [it]."

Small Steps

"A foam cup is such a minor thing in our lives that people don't consider it," said Curtis Dalpra, communications manager for the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. The commission, based in Rockville, Maryland, was established by the United States Congress to address water quality and resource issues affecting the Potomac.

Dalpra said that once people participate in an annual Potomac cleanup and see the amount of Styrofoam cups and other trash littering the river, "their minds change quickly."

Dalpra should know. He has volunteered with the Alice Ferguson Foundation's Potomac cleanup for 14 out of its 16 years.

As Dalpra sees it, the problem of water pollution is rooted in personal behavior. And that, Dalpra says, can be hard to change.

"It's a real battle, as is any battle to get people to change their daily behaviors," Dalpra said. "Whether it's littering, smoking, eating, drinking—all these things are tough [to change.]"

Small changes in behavior, however, can have large consequences. Alice Ferguson Foundation staff calculated that at least 30 percent of the trash collected during the Potomac cleanup this year was plastic bottles that could have been recycled.

The trash was not confined to soda bottles, however. "We had enough material this year to furnish several houses with appliances," Bowen said. Air conditioners, blenders, humidifiers, refrigerators, and hot-water tanks were among some of the bigger items found.

Car parts were also abundant. "I'm talking everything from the axles to the radiators to the water pumps to the steering wheels," Bowen said. Volunteers also found more than a thousand tires, which litterbugs often dump to avoid disposal fees.

Trash Free?

Bowen says annual cleanup efforts are only part of the solution needed for the Potomac. The river "is not trash free by any stretch of the imagination after our cleanup," she said. "We … get rid of some of the volume, but it's not clean."

This year, for example, Mississippi volunteer Chad Pregracke brought a barge, several smaller boats, and a work crew to collect trash along the Potomac after last month's annual cleanup day.

In three weeks the garbage-skimming barge operator and his fellow volunteers collected 75 tons of trash along one small section of the river around Washington, D.C. In some smaller coves, the volunteers discovered trash from storm drainage piled to a depth of three feet (one meter).

To meet its goal of a trash-free river, the Alice Ferguson Foundation plans to convene a trash summit later this fall, Bowen said. There she hopes to address how communities can coordinate their efforts to tackle what often seems to be an overwhelming problem.

A case in point: One thousand and twenty-two tons—or more than 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms)—of trash have been removed by Alice Ferguson Foundation cleanup volunteers in the past 16 years.

Group Effort

Fortunately, the magnitude of the issue does not seem to discourage those who support the foundation's efforts. Participants in the annual cleanup come from a wide variety of community partners as well as corporate sponsors and government agencies. "It's the most eclectic mix of organizations," Bowen said.

Paul Hagen, a Washington-area lawyer and cleanup site leader, sees all ages of volunteers, from senior citizens to babies in backpacks, joining the effort.

Hagen said he encourages people to enjoy the recreational opportunities the river provides—opportunities he sees as ways to raise awareness. "I think having the community take advantage of the Potomac is the best way to get people to think about what [they] need to do to make sure that it stays in good shape."