PORT CLINTON - Schuylkill Headwaters Association and volunteers cleaned up the beaches of the 2014 Pennsylvania River of the Year, the Schuylkill River, on Sunday near Route 61 and Port Clinton Avenue.
The "beach sweep" was held from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to clean up trash and debris still left after the last cleanup in the fall.
Sierra Gladfelter, Schuylkill Headwaters outreach coordinator, said Sunday that there was a good turnout with about 20 volunteers from Penn State Schuylkill; Blue Mountain Area School District; Blue Mountain Wildlife, who maintain river on the Berks County side; volunteers from the Port Clinton community and other parts of the county.
According to newspaper archives, the cleanup was part of the two-month Schuylkill Scrub, where an estimated 1,500 people are helping to clean up the river that beat out four other finalists to be named the 2014 Pennsylvania River of the Year.
Cleanups started April 5.
"Our goal was to continue what we did last fall," Gladfelter said. "People haven't been using it too much over the winter, so there's not that much more. We figured we might as well sweep it. Get what's here so it's clean. It looks like today we should be able to get most of it out here. We are going to make a trip to Cougles and recycle the glass and plastic because that's what most of it is and lots of diapers, too."
In the fall, volunteers collected 52 bags of garbage, and there was about the same Sunday.
Most of the trash was left from picnics, such as food wrappers, glass bottles and cans.
Gladfelter said that a challenge was trying to clean up a lot of the broken glass.
"You almost need to bring a backhoe down and scrape it out," she said.
According to Gladfelter, the biggest issue was that there is no place for people to dispose of trash.
While she said that Port Clinton doesn't want to put a trash can because of liability and it would show it accepts the behavior of the people who come there, it could help solve the issue of trash left behind.
"This land is county land, in an interim, so it lacks one clear group to take responsibility," she said. "That's why it does get trashed."
One of the reasons why the site was picked, Gladfelter said, was because it floods all the time and if the garbage was left, it will eventually wash into the river.
"There's much more of a direct impact on the river," she said. "Some of the Japanese knotweed holds it back a little bit, but still, all this stuff is going to wash down into the river and get clogged behind the dam. Even though we're not in the river itself, we're definitely impacting water quality."
Tina Rose, coordinator of leadership and development and community service at Penn State Schuylkill, brought four students to the cleanup, as well as her son, Grant Rose.
The students were not part of a campus club, but just decided to give up their Sunday to volunteer in the area.
Rose said that the area was despicable, and she was not able to believe anyone would visit it and come to swim with all the trash.
She even found mattresses and a television set at the site.
Also volunteering was Gladfelter's mother, Cindy Ross.
"That's a lot of work to drag a bed down here and a TV," Ross said. "It's not like you open the car and dump it out the door."
The "beach sweep" was the only cleanup in Schuylkill County that was part of Schuylkill Scrub along the river that spans almost 100 miles across Southeast Pennsylvania, from Pottsville to downtown Philadelphia.
The Schuylkill Scrub was founded in 2010 by the Green Valleys Association and the Hay Creek Watershed Association of Greater Pottstown.
Information about cleanups along the Schuylkill River for the Schuylkill Scrub effort is available at www.SchuylkillScrub.org, while more information about Schuylkill Headwaters Association is available at www.schuylkillheadwaters.org.