River clean-up goes on

Anya Tikka
Posted 8/21/12

BARRYVILLE, NY — When Ruth and her son Dave Jones started the annual river clean-up in 1990, the Delaware River was full of garbage, some veteran cleanup crew members remember. Those days, …

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River clean-up goes on

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BARRYVILLE, NY — When Ruth and her son Dave Jones started the annual river clean-up in 1990, the Delaware River was full of garbage, some veteran cleanup crew members remember. Those days, environmental regulations were more lax. Statistics show that the number of tons of garbage found in the river has gone down from the ‘90s. Recently, 2012 had 19.68 tons, and last year 8.92 tons. Flooding is a big factor in the generation of debris in the water. There were 20.93 tons of junk after the flood of 2006, 27.25 in 2008, and a record 37.5 tons in 2007, that year’s take included a 300 gallon gas tank with pump.

Kittatinny Canoes’ annual river clean-up has become a tradition to many who attend—they’ve been coming for 20 years and more. “It’s a kind of an extended family reunion,” said Patty Vedro, who’d come from Texas with her husband. They were joining their extended family of 16 for the annual camping and clean-up effort, and said they were happy to help and to teach the kids in the family about the value of woods and river.

Sylvia Clarke and Louis Heibers came from Woodridge, NJ. “It’s a nice thing to do; it’s great, trying to get the river clean,” Sylvia said at the start of the two-day excursion at the Barryville base pavilion where free breakfast was served to all. Free camping, dinner, all the equipment and transport are also provided free to the volunteers by Kittatinny Canoes.

The clean-up crews go all the way to the Delaware Water Gap over two days, camping overnight and starting again from Matamoras, PA the second morning.

Among the items regularly recovered from the river are tires and cans. Last year, 244 tires were collected, down from the record 1,004 in 1993; the record amount of cans was 908 lbs. in 1992, going down to the mere tenth of that last year, 99.

Among the less appealing and sometimes mystifying items over the years have been a human spine, many safes, a saddle, a brain model, snakes in a bag, and even a message in a bottle in Russian Cyrillic writing, believed to be a good luck message on an upcoming wedding.

This year, Upper Delaware River Scenic and Recreational River Superintendent Kristina Heister and Upper Delaware Council’s Travis O’Dell came to Barryville to support the event.

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