NNYP Presidents Column
By Ed Greiner
The Paddlers celebrated Earth Day 2024 with a trash pickup. Four of us are Volunteer Stewards with the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor; Sue, Mike, Kim and myself. Our territory extends from Freeman’s Bridge to Lock E9. Among other duties, we are tasked with keeping the parks and launches along the way clear of trash and anything obstructing access to the water. We had just received our shipment of supplies and swag and were ready to go.
On Monday April 22nd, we started at the east side of the Lock 9 park. This area gets a lot of visitors and fishermen. As you can imagine, beverage containers were the most numerous items of trash. Mike had other obligations that day, so Geoff joined us. We were soon done with that park and headed down the river. Geoff told us that Kiwanis Park had been cleaned the previous day by another group, so we continued on to Gateway Landing on the ramp to SCCC. That area was a veritable garbage dump. The river was low and we couldn’t get to the water’s edge because of the mud. There was some trash in the mud, but we had enough to keep us busy on dry ground. Apparently, some kind of ceremony took place there as it does sometimes at Lock 9. There were artificial flowers scattered about and evidence of a fire. We cleaned all that up plus numerous beer and soda cans. After that it was time to move down to Freeman’s Bridge. The launch area is, technically, out of our territory but as we were there, we cleaned up what little trash we could find. Aside from a few hundred cigarette butts, there wasn’t much in the launch and parking areas. I think the presence of a trash can on site helps a lot. Around the bend on the bike path was a different story. The hill by the bridge approach had a lot of litter, probably from the cars going by uphill. We got what we could of that mess and called it a day. Altogether, we filled nine big trash bags.
Our next project will be to paddle downriver and pick up what we find in the water and on the shore. That will probably be a two-stage event.
