Eco-warriors tackle trash along the Flint River for Rivers Alive event
Staff Photos: Carlton Fletcher
By Carlton Fletcher
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ALBANY — By mid-morning Saturday, a couple of hours into Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful’s annual Rivers Alive cleanup along the Flint River, some of the 50 or so volunteers had already, individually, picked up five bags of trash along the banks of the river.
A group of about 20, heading out in more than a dozen canoes and kayaks, was making its way downriver from the Georgia Power dam, looking for debris in the Flint.
“The river is low right now — with Georgia Power having drawn down the river’s flow to work on their dams and with the drought that’s hit the area pretty hard — so while we hope we don’t find a lot of trash, inevitably, I think we will,” said R.J. Gipaya of Americus, who is part of the Flint Riverkeeper organization. “We’re keeping an eye out for the microplastics, hoping that the macroplastics don’t break down into the river.”
Members of KADB — including that organization’s board of directors — the Riverkeeper group, the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center in Baker County, the local Rivers Alive Group and the Thronateeska Heritage Center all pitched in to help clean up the natural wonder KADB Executive Director Judy Bowles called “our most precious resource.”
“This is the 16th year we’ve participated in Rivers Alive, and in the previous 15 years we’ve picked up 52 tons of debris,” Bowles said. “As you’ve seen, members of our board are out here, involved in the cleanup. We don’t have board meetings where our board sits around and listens to me or anyone else talk. This is a working board meeting.”
One of those KADB board members, Joanne Conger, who is an environmental engineer for MillerCoors, said events like the Rivers Alive cleanup are vital in teaching younger generations about environmental responsibility.
“Things like this are a part of — they are in my family — trying to create a generation of kids that care about the environment,” Conger said. “In our house, we recycle, we pick up litter. Imagine what our community would be like if everyone did that.”
KADB Project Manager LaVerne Levins, who has worked with the organization for 25 years, said the volunteers who participate in Rivers Alive help make up for individuals who refuse to clean up after themselves.
“It’s really sad that our volunteers find so much trash along the river and the River Walk,” Levins said. “We’ve got bags full of plastic water bottles. It’s really ridiculous when you consider that there are trash cans all along the walking path.”
Meanwhile, as the group taking watercraft down the Flint readied to take off and start their hunt for river debris, Riverkeeper official David Dixon said past cleanup efforts have removed most of the larger trash dumped into the river.
“You go into this hoping you don’t find a lot, but since we weren’t able to get into the water last year (because Hurricane Michael had helped swell the river’s waters) we’re looking at two years’ worth (of debris),” Dixon said. “Hopefully we’ve got all the big stuff out — refrigerators, appliances, and we even found a toilet once, had a john in a jon boat — but we’ll have to see what we find.”
As the eco-warriors prepared for a quick safety briefing before heading down the Flint, Gipaya and his brother, Luke Hardaway of Pine Mountain, showed an eagerness to get on the water.
“We’re definitely paddlers,” Hardaway said. “This is what we do.”
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