Volunteers from Holyoke High School North weren’t afraid of a challenge—or a little mud—during the 28th annual Source to Sea clean-up.
Ona recent Friday afternoon, 14 students and three staff members from HHS North’s Community and Global Studies Academy donned their utility gloves to collect litter from Springdale Park and the nearby riverbed, collecting more than 450 pounds of trash and bulky waste. The student volunteers worked in groups, moving methodically along the park’s wooded perimeter and riverside to remove any garbage they could find before properly bagging and disposing of it.
Organized by the non-profit Connecticut River Conservancy (CRC), the annual river clean-up brings together volunteers to keep litter from making its way into the Connecticut River watershed, which in turn prevents that litter from ever reaching the Atlantic Ocean. The 17 volunteers from North were among the 3,000 registered volunteers over the course of the weekend, with groups and individuals participating in river cleanups along the Connecticut River's 406-mile stretch from the Canadian border in Northern Vermont to the Long Island Sound in Old Saybrook, CT.
Staff from both the CRC and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) State Forest led the cleanup, guiding the group on the importance of safety measures such as gloves, trash pickers, and sharps containers. Gabrielle Chevalier from CRC also emphasized the importance of maintaining “trash tallies” in an organized river clean-up.
Trash tallies are a record of each piece of refuse found during a clean up, Ms. Chevalier explained. Knowing what was pulled from the area can help determine the source of the littering, the potential impacts on wildlife, and how different types of litter decompose. This year’s student group recovered a wide variety of waste, in addition to paper and plastic litter, including tires, bricks, a stray baseball, and a queen-sized mattress.
Springdale Park was chosen by staff and students as this year’s clean-up site due to its proximity to the high school, location on the Connecticut River, and its reputation in Holyoke as a favorite recreation space for many. Volunteers who cleaned up the site in prior years remarked that the park and riverside were looking better than last year, with less litter to be found.
“It makes sense,” said Ms. Chevalier. “People want to keep a nice place nice.”