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The Paddling Pickers
You would think that after a couple of hours picking up trash and such along Route 81 in Tully with other members of the Onondaga Ski Club during their semi-annual Adopt-a-Highway program this spring, we would have had enough. Well, three members brought along their paddle craft with the intent of being on the water for part of the afternoon, but with a wild idea of picking up the trash and such along some waterway here in CNY. This was the results of a casual paddle after last year's Adopt-a-Highway fall pickup, but along portions of the old Erie Canal, the nation's first super highway. If you recall, Remo Bianco, Marilyn and Michael McCabe picked up a bit of trash that day in their kayaks (Garbage Scow photo) on the way back from a three mile paddle east from the Cedar Bay Park area in DeWitt.
So, off to Cedar Bay again this year to continue the experiment. Remo had "Too Grand", his Rob Roy kayak, but this year M&M brought "She-Wins" the Wenonah as the canoe has much more room for whatever, and is much more stable when reaching out to pick up the trash. It was decided to head west from the put-in thereby covering the length of the park.
Right away we were using our "hooks" to reach out and pickup the bottles, broken Styrofoam whatever's, and whatever else we spotted floating. A problem became quickly apparent…most of the trash was against the shoreline under the overhanging limbs/stalks of the plants growing along the shore. A good "hook" is definitely required along with long sleeves, sunny or not.
Moving along the shoreline, we filled up our trash bags rather fast as the bottles take up a lot of cubic inches. We also came across two five gallon plastic pails just barely floating on the canal. They were too heavy to hoist up, so we had to figure a way to tie them up with the rope we brought, and slowly tow them back to the trash drop off point. We also came across a black plastic bag floating on the canal, filled with picnic trash of one kind or another. This proved to be more difficult to tow as the bag was already torn…it left a trail of innards that we had to chase down.
It is amazing how much stuff was along this short third of a mile stretch. I was hoping we could clean out all the area west of the park to the Butternut Drive terminus and back to the Burdick Street Bridge. Hahahahahaha. It'll take a lot more participants with boats, or a heck of a lot longer time. Going beyond that towards Chittenango…well, that's another story.
I talked with the Town Of DeWitt people about our adventure, and asked them about future paddles of this nature. They realize there is much trash to be picked up, and were appreciative of what we were able to accomplish. They were going to arrange a trash pickup for today's trash too.
Right now, the town and the state are discussing who's-in-charge of the Cedar Bay area. The entire 36 miles of the Old Erie Canal is a State Park, but it may be that sections will be "taken over" by local communities in the future.
Later this year I will contact the town again to see who/what/etc. I am going to assume the town/state would not complain or deny anybody undertaking this activity, so if others in the club are interested, please let me know. We can figure out a date/location/etc. together to undertake cleaning up the nation's first super "highway".
Mike McCabe
juneway209@juno.com
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