What's in our river?

What's in our rivers?  Our city celebrated "Water Week" with a whole bunch of events, including a bunch of river clean ups.  This is the second year I've participated.  Last year, we mostly cleaned up a patch of woods near a river; this year I wish I'd brought some good wading shoes because a bunch of people hopped right into the creek we were assigned to.  Instead, I was relegated to the shore, hauling out the things that the waders handed up.

We've heard so much about plastic in our oceans, and I picked up so much plastic from the woods last year, that I would have thought the main stuff we'd haul out of the river would have been, well, plastic stuff.

One of the most adventurous waders,
pulling plastic bags that had gotten swept into the branches in the river.

But the river moves along at a pace that moves the plastic along with it.  The only place we really found plastic trash was on the shore, or at a natural dam that acts a bit as a sieve.

Instead, in this particular river, our really major haul was shopping carts.

There were lots and lots of shopping carts. 

Shopping in the river, with four carts for three people.

At least it was not too difficult to transport the carts back to the trash dump site.

Heading for that orange fencing in the distance

There were about a dozen of us at this particular site; we spent about an hour and a half cleaning up a half mile stretch of river.  The ranger in charge said she was surprised at "how little trash we found". 

Our trash haul.

Maybe next year we can make the ranger happy (?) and find more trash in the river then?