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Georgia's Annual Waterway Cleanup

Creating awareness of and involvement in
the preservation of Georgia's water resources
 
A quarterly publication of Rivers Alive

The Fall Cleanups Are Underway!

Rivers Alive organizers have already held 45 cleanups in 2011, but cleanup activity has only just begun with 100 plus cleanups scheduled over the next few months.

This means our office has been very busy distributing cleanup materials and the always-popular Rivers Alive t-shirt. Thank you for helping our organizing efforts by submitting your shirt size requests in a timely manner!

To help you coordinate and promote your cleanup, we've updated the following materials:

If you haven't already downloaded them, here are the volunteer waiver forms, sign-in sheets and data collection cards:

Large cleanups may qualify for our Rivers Alive banners. Contact the state office for more information 404-362-6536. Or e-mail riversalive@gaepd.org.

If you've already conducted a cleanup, help us keep accurate records by submitting your cleanup numbers on our Final Tally Form.

We rely on accurate numbers to help organize next year's effort. In addition, the Rivers Alive board will use your cleanup results to judge award winners at next spring's luncheon and award banquet - so provide as much detail as you can!

Stream Habitat Matters

As you participate in Rivers Alive cleanups, you can collect and provide some very useful and easy to obtain information that will tell us a lot about the health of your body of water. By following the visual survey steps on the 2011 activity poster you can conduct a visual survey of your stream or river. Once you have collected these data, they can be faxed to 404-675-6245, mailed to Georgia Adopt-A-Stream, 4220 International Parkway, Suite 101, Atlanta, GA 30354, or emailed to riversalive@gaepd.org.

The following paragraphs are taken from the introduction to the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Visual Stream Survey manual.

A healthy stream is a busy place. Wildlife and birds find shelter and food near and in its waters. Vegetation grows along its banks, shading the stream, slowing its flow in rainstorms, filtering pollutants before they enter the stream, and sheltering animals.

Within the stream itself are fish and a myriad of insects Read more and other tiny creatures with very particular needs. For example, stream dwellers need dissolved oxygen to breathe, rocks, overhanging tree limbs, logs, and roots for shelter, vegetation and other tiny animals to eat, and special places to breed and hatch their young. For many of these activities, they might also need water of specific velocity, depth, and temperature.

Human activities shape and alter many of these stream characteristics. We dam up, straighten, divert, dredge, and discharge into streams. We build roads, parking lots, homes, offices, golf courses, and factories in the watershed. We farm, mine, cut down trees, and graze our livestock in and along stream edges. We also swim, fish, and canoe in streams. Volunteers should be aware that the surrounding land affects stream habitat.

McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP Supports Rivers Alive

The ability to convert change into opportunity and challenge into solution is our hallmark at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. We meld sophisticated legal, business, and government acumen; insight into our clients' industries and businesses; and an approach to client service that emphasizes effectiveness and value. Whether you seek to grow, to navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment, or to manage risk, our goal is to help clients achieve their vision.

McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP is committed to enhancing the quality of life for the people who live in the communities in which we have offices. Through pro bono legal services, community service efforts, and the MLA Foundation, the firm supports both individuals and organizations by means of charitable donations and untold hours of volunteer activities.

In the record breaking heat of an Atlanta summer, MLA attorneys, staff, family and friends committed their day to our local rivers through the new MLA partnership with Rivers Alive. We believe this commitment to our neighbors helps to enhance the experience of working with and for the firm, and ensures that our communities receive the critical support they need to thrive.

Tools To Help Your Cleanup

Litter picker tools are used by people who clean up litter, usually in a public area. While it's perfectly possible to just bend over and use your hands, this can be both messy and a strain on a person's back over time. Here are a few tools that litter pickers can use to make their job easier.

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Sticks

The more traditional type of litter picker tool is a straight stick with a nail on the end of it. This tool is reminiscent of a ski pole, and it can be made of wood, fiberglass or even a straight shaft of metal. Litter pickers stab pieces of trash, lift up the stick and then push the trash off the spike at the end and into a bag or other container. These tools aren't as practical for garbage like aluminum cans, but they are a help in picking up items such as paper that can be easily pierced.

Picker-Upper

More technologically advanced litter picker tools act like mechanical grabbing arms. There is a pistol grip on one end of the tool, and the trigger pulls a cord that runs down the arm. That cord tightens a set of jaws at the end of the litter picker, and these jaws (metal--coated in rubber or plastic) grip together to lift up pieces of trash. These types of litter picker tools are more expensive, but they don't have sharp parts that could injure the picker when placing litter into a bag.

Satchel

Another tool used by litter pickers is their bag. A satchel, worn across the chest and resting on the hip like an old-fashioned newsboy, is a common accessory for litter pickers. These bags are sturdy, often made of canvas or nylon. These bags leave the litter picker's arms free, and they distribute the weight of collected litter over the picker's shoulder rather than on their arm as would be the case if they had to just carry their bag in their free hand.

5 Gallon Buckets

Lugging around a plastic bag during a cleanup can be cumbersome and unwieldy, hindering the act of removing trash. Some volunteers have found that it's helpful to first place their trash in 5 gallon buckets, later to be consolidated in trash bags or dumpsters. The low cost route is to reuse discarded 5 gallon paint or plaster buckets. Savvy volunteers have also discovered that grocery stores will discard 5 gallon buckets that were previously used to transport food products. If you can't find used ones, these 5 gallon buckets can also be purchased from hardware stores.

Litter Awareness

As we look around our beautiful country, we all too often see plastic bottles, cans, glass bottles, polystyrene containers and cups, plastic, paper and a whole lot of other rubbish littering our streets, our parks, alongside our highways, our neighborhoods, our shopping areas, our rivers and many other places in our environment.

No waste company can keep a town or city clean when residents litter and dump trash illegally and randomly. If residents join in to clean up their environment and then keep it clean, we win because we have a cleaner, safer and more hygienic city or town.

Does It Matter If We Litter?

With so many other important issues such as crime and violent crime, AIDS, child abuse, and joblessness, should we care about whether we put our litter in the bin (or recycle where possible)? Should we care if the environment in which we live is kept clean?

YES

It does matter and we should care.

WHY?

Litter is both an environmental and a social issue.

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  • It's unsightly. It reduces the aesthetic appeal of public places including streets, parks and waterways.
  • It costs the community huge sums of money and time to clean up every year.
  • It causes blockages of the drainage system and causes flooding which costs cities and counties millions of dollars to repair. This is money that can be better spent on housing and education.
  • When it gets into our waterways - rivers, dams and the sea - it can kill aquatic life directly (eg. through choking) and indirectly through its impacts on water quality.
  • It decreases oxygen levels when it decays in water.
  • It kills rivers, and because water is such a precious resource and we have a limited supply, we need to preserve and cherish our rivers and waterways, which are the lifeblood of the environment. They provide homes for wildlife and plants, water supplies for homes, industries and farms, and places of recreation and enjoyment for us all.
  • It can be dangerous to people, particularly when it involves items such as broken glass, rust, needles and syringes.
  • It can be a fire hazard, such as when lit cigarettes are thrown out of passing cars.
  • It harms birds because they may choke on plastic, chewing gum or any other litter that gets stuck in their throats.
  • It breeds rats which carry diseases, destroy and eat crops and food, and chew electrical and telephone cables.
  • It promotes illness.
  • It encourages crime since areas that are not taken care of are seen to be unprotected and, therefore, easier crime targets.
  • It manifests a culture of disrespect for others in public areas.
  • It diminishes the pride people have in their environment.
  • It creates a culture of lack of caring.
  • It costs the municipalities a lot more money to clean up the litter than it costs them to empty bins.
Georgia Rivers Alive | 4220 International Pkwy, Suite 101 | Atlanta, GA 30354
404.675.6240 | riversalive@gaepd.org | Fax: 404.675.6245 | http://www.riversalive.org
 

Major Corporate Sponsors

Georgia Power | Coca-Cola Company | Oglethorpe Power | Hunton & Williams

Sutherland | McKenna Long & Aldridge | Alston & Bird