By Sandra LaVigne, GSWA Director of Water Quality Programs
City of Water (COW) Day took place on Saturday, July 10. COW is a “region-wide day, organized by the Waterfront Alliance and its partners, to raise awareness about the risk we all face from sea level rise and climate change and champion a climate resilient New York and New Jersey harbor.”
GSWA participated in COW day by conducting a stream clean-up. It was a great success thanks to our dedicated volunteers. We organized stream clean-ups at four locations:
Loantaka headwaters – near Ginty Fields in Morris Township
Millington Gorge in Long Hill
Passaic River Park – near the soccer fields in Berkeley Heights
Canoe Launch – off South Orange Ave. in Livingston
With 18 volunteers and 11 site leaders, including a mix of GSWA staff, Board, and Advisory Council members, we accomplished an amazing feat of community service and found some new friends along the way. Of the volunteers, four registered to volunteer on our website and had never done anything with GSWA prior. Three other volunteers stopped by that morning, having no knowledge of the event, and pitched in to help on the spot.
We cleaned up approximately 1.7 miles of stream bank on the Passaic River and Loantaka Brook combined and collected:
- over 450 individual items of single-use plastics
- 2 tires
- over 200 tin cans
- 1 old fire extinguisher
- a dining room chair
- a tiny skeleton
- and many bags of general trash
Everyone did amazing work! Now, multiply those numbers by the 80-mile length of the Passaic River…
If everything were equal, and there was no more trash at any one spot along the river than what we found, that would equate to 36,000 pieces of single-use plastic in the Passaic River alone. But all things are not equal further downstream in more urban areas. The increased population, as well as the increase in impervious surface, means that even more trash finds its way into the water.
We need to keep up this effort and get the word out to our communities about the importance of reducing single-use plastics in our lives. It is imperative for everyone understand the impact these items are having on our streams and as they head out into the ocean, and throughout the entire planet.
Thank you again for all who helped and supported this event. Next year, we plan to increase the participating towns in this clean-up to help connect our communities to the amazing resource that is the Passaic River and its tributaries.
