Hudson River Cleanup

5/13/2022 (Permalink)

The planning that goes into the RiverKeeper Sweep is started a year in advance.  The meetings take place throughout the winter and as the date of May 7th is mentioned often, the ideas of a warm spring day with balmy temperatures in the early 70s conjure up a perfect day for cleaning up the river.  

This year, well not so much.   We started the day in the early 50s with a cold driving rain and  wind gusts from the east.    

As we trudged our way down the banks of the mighty Hudson, armed with blue recycle bags, the thought was to pick up some trash and get out of there.    That was not at all how it ended up.

We weathered the storm and cleaned up the Pier Pointe Cove of over 45 pounds of recyclable plastic,  and 5 huge bags of garbage    There were only 3 of us on this miserable day.  We were out there for about 3 hours, but in that short time we made a huge difference. The community surprised each other by showing up at the river's edge Sunday morning armed with pickers and their own bags to clean up the rest of the river banks.   No one organized it, it just happened.  Countless bags of recyclables were picked up and an endless amount of trash.   We all learned the value of community pitching in and hope that next year's River Sweep is a huge success.   Will keep you posted with volunteer information!