EPCAMR

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Volunteers sought for cleanup of illegal dumpsite along Snake Road in Columbia County Volunteers are being invited to help clean up a roadside area in Columbia County that has become a frequent target for illegal dumping.The Eastern Pennsylvania

We received a message this morning from one of our first responders, Sargeant John Van Why from the Hanover Township Police Department to see if we could assist in organizing a small crew of EPCAMR volunteers to pick up a scattered pile of household rubbish, boxes, and a chicken wire fence from Warrior Creek at the outlet Poole and culvert windfall along Spencer Drive across from the beautiful Hanover Crossings Marshland preserved by the North Branch Land Trust.

Ian Padden, our AmeriCorps Stewards Individual Placements Conservation Legacy volunteer, Chris Orourke, Thaddeus Salvador, and Dennis Duke joined Bobby Hughes after work to rebag and remove all of the trash from Warrior Creek, which is a clean stream with fish and macroinvertebrates living within it, the County roadside, and the streambank. Bobby spoke to 3 residents who drove by during the cleanup to let them know what we were doing and that this wasn’t our first time in this area to conduct a litter cleanup. The dumping is being investigated and they have several leads.

The Hanover Township Road Department will pick up the 10-12 bags of trash tomorrow that were scattered and had a pretty bad stench to them in this heat and due to the breakdown of the food and whatever else was in the diapers that were soaked and floating around. Around 250 lbs of trash were estimated to have been removed. On our way out from the site to go grab the volunteers some pizza 🍕 from Pizza Bella, at the intersection of Spencer Lane and Middle Road, we see a Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful sign that ironically says “Keep PA Beautiful” and a STOP 🛑 sign, almost telling people to stop and think before they litter.

Pioneer Day is a great way to learn about our Anthracite Mining Hisotry and Legacy!

Here's your sign to book your train themed weekend with us!

On Thursday and Friday, we attended the inaugural Chesapeake Bay Waters Connected program developed through a grant that was awarded and submitted by the Lehman Sanctuary. It provides NEPA teachers and watershed specialists an immersive, full circle watershed education on an historic Living Classroom’s sailing ship, the Sigsbee, on the Chesapeake Bay, our nation’s largest estuary as we sailed along the Patunxent River and Patapsco River at Masonville’s Cove.

We were happy to be invited as a conservation partner who assisted in providing a letter of support for the application to launch this watershed training through the support of American Water Charitable Foundation and the Robert H Spitz Foundation through the Scranton Area Community Foundation. We’ve offered to take the teachers on a tour of the Wyoming Valley watersheds impacted by AMD to give them a sense of the work and legacy impacts on the Middle Susquehanna River.

We talked to the teachers about our work and efforts to cleanup the land and water in our headwater region of the Chesapeake Bay while learning about the cleanup and monitoring efforts of the The Living Classroom, in Baltimore, MD.

Trashwheels are popular at the mouths of major rivers into the Bay and we saw two of them including the original Mr. Trashwheel at the Inner Harbor.

Maria Gereda and Bobby tested the water quality, trawled for some fish and crabs and oysters, determines the breakdown time periods for litter and trash that reach the Bay, and saw dozens of species of birds. We learned about the invasive flathead and blue catfish and snakehead fish that goes by another name these days..The “Chesapeake Chessy”, and learned about Fort McHenry, the rebuilding of the Frances Scott Key bridge, and how to sail. Bobby Hughes got a chance to sail the Sigsbee back towards the dock and did many other teachers on board.

We got to spend time with many colleagues and our dear friend and supporter Alana Roberts from Pennsylvania American Water.