SPRINGDALE - A group of volunteers in Springdale took advantage of a sunny morning Saturday to do some environmental spring cleaning.
In observance of World Water Day, 20-30 volunteers, many of them members of the Illinois River Watershed Partnership, met at Lake Springdale to clean litter from around the lake and a stretch of nearby Spring Creek.
“We wanted to celebrate the Northwest Arkansas and the entire Illinois River watershed,” partnership education outreach coordinator Lauren Ray said. “We are blessed with so much water resources, like creeks, streams, lakes, rivers. So today we are wanting to celebrate that by beautifying them and improving ourwater quality by picking up litter.”
Established in 1993 by the United Nations, World Water Day’s theme this year is raising awareness of the connection between water and energy, and their economic and social impacts, according to a World Water Day website.
The website said it seeks to raise awareness particularly for the millions of people around the world who haveno safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, sufficient food or energy services.
Under a sunny, cloudless sky Saturday morning, the volunteers at Lake Springdale spent more time in and along the shores of Spring Creek than around the 10-acre city-owned lake, which didn’t appear to have much of a litter problem.
It didn’t take long for volunteers to pile up stacks of trash bags filled with empty water bottles, beer cans, plastic lids, discarded car and bicycle tires, foam pads and sheets of twisted metal that were pulled from the creek.
“A lot of it seems to be debris that’s washed down the creek,” Ray’s father, David Ray of Springdale, said as he handed out more trash bags to volunteers. “It’s on either side of the creek.”
He said he thought a lot of the debris came from the upstream neighborhoods where plastic shopping bags and other debris may have blown or fallen out of people’s cars or trash cans and ended up in the creek.
The trash that Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse pulled out of the creek, however, couldn’t have blown out of a car. He dredged up heavygauge metal wire along with the two bags of other trash he gathered. Sprouse saidhe wasn’t surprised at what was coming out of the creek. When it rains heavily and the creek rises, it can carry a lot of things downstream.
After dropping off the trash, Sprouse and Springdale Public Works Director Sam Goade, who also is president of the Illinois River Watershed Partnership, headed off to pull out some metal bedsprings that Sprouse spotted in the creek.
The volunteers worked Saturday near the headwaters of Spring Creek. The creek’s water eventually flows into the Illinois River, Lauren Ray said. The trash they pulledfrom the creek Saturday probably would have washed all the way to the river if it had stayed in the creek, Ray said. The volunteers made more of a difference Saturday than they realized, she said.
Saturday’s cleanup did more than help protect the Illinois River watershed and beautify a city park, Sprouse said.
“Anytime you can get volunteers out to do anything, you’re strengthening the volunteer base and getting people involved in the community,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas Community College plant biology students Jessica Cheval and Mindy Cooper, both of Springdale, hauled out three trash bags of litter and a car tire. Cooper’s boyfriend, Derick Echols, dragged a long board up the steep creek bank.
“It’s actually cleaner than I expected,” Cheval said about the amount of debris the volunteers found in the creek.
The two women were volunteering Saturday as part of a class project on the impact of watershed protection.
And it was a good cause to keep the lake pretty, Cheval said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 03/23/2014