Karen Roberts, Cablevision
News: This weekend, while some folks were enjoying a few rays,
others were cleaning up their creek. The Fishkill Creek Cleanup
happened on Saturday, and organizers say it was a resounding success.
Volunteers were digging for buried treasure here, all part of the
cleanup of the Fishkill Creek, organized by the Fishkill Creek
Watershed Committee.
George Mansfield, Coordinator,
Fishkill Creek Watershed: Rick Oestrike
asked me if I would help organize a local
cleanup here on the creek. I had done one
in my back yard, which borders the creek
a few years ago, and, it sort of began to
raise awareness locally that the creek is
not a sewer, not a toilet - things don't
just disappear - that someone has to
pick it up at some point.
Roberts: And that point was this Saturday. It took a few good
men and women of all ages to clean up this creek. About twenty gave
their time to go up and downstream of the East Main St. Bridge in
Beacon. Along the bank and into the water, organizers say they pulled
everything and anything you could imagine from the creek.
Mansfield: We're finding just about everything. I mean, there's
generations of stuff down there. There's air conditioners, tires,
obviously shopping carts, bicycles, bottles, stuffed animals -
everything you could imagine. It's being treated like a sewer.
Roberts: The Fishkill Watershed Committee compiled a report of
what they found in the water, over three hours and 26 garbage bags.
Volunteers collected 57 cans and 100 bottles.
Some other interesting items: a television, couch, mattress spring,
stereo speaker, two washing machines, six large metal pipes, and seven
bicycles, down by the water.
Mansfield: It's really about raising awareness, that we chose
this spot specifically because it's a really public area, and a lot of
people come down here to look at the falls, and before you see the
falls, you saw a lot of garbage. So, we're hoping that just the effort
maybe makes people more aware that the garbage doesn't just disappear.
Roberts: The City of
Beacon carted off three dumptrucks full of collected garbage over the
weekend.
