It Takes a Team To Clean Up a Stream
The Arlington-Fairfax
Chapter is leveraging local needs and
interests that intersect with the chapter’s
conservation mission to increase manpower
for cleanup and restoration projects.
The chapter adopted two
streams – a 1.2-mile section of Cub Run and
2.4 miles of Bull Run – that drain into the
Occoquan River and ultimately into the
Chesapeake Bay. The chapter also hosts three to
four cleanups at Virginia’s Mason Neck Park
on Belmont Bay each year. All told, the chapter
holds at least one cleanup event open to the
public every month. That means feet on the
ground (and in the water) are needed every
month.
“What I basically do is
create the opportunity to volunteer and
broadcast it,” says chapter Save Our Streams
committee chairman Colin Riley. He posts each
event online on community newspaper calendars
and other local groups’ Web sites. “My
approach has been to conduct competitive
intelligence – see what other groups are
doing out there to avoid competing with their
events and to ask them to help spread the word
about our events.” Riley maintains a
volunteer database so he can communicate
volunteer opportunities to past cleanup
participants. In addition, he has received help
in spreading the word about upcoming events
from the county’s stormwater management
agency, the Virginia Department of
Environmental Quality, and the Virginia
Department of Conservation and Recreation, all
of which he regularly e-mails about cleanup
events.
“We’ve had school
groups, church groups, and businesses
volunteer,” says Riley. For three scheduled
cleanups last fall, volunteers included
employees from a local corporation and students
from a local middle school. How did Riley make
those connections? An employee of Datran
Media who is also an Arlington-Fairfax Chapter
member was tasked with finding volunteer
efforts for the company – a perfect match for
Riley’s needs. A biology teacher from Rocky
Run Middle School, which is located near one of
the chapter’s adopted streams, contacted the
chapter about getting her students involved
with the project as well.
“I try to make it a positive experience
for each volunteer, which also helps get people
to come back,” Riley says. “A volunteer who
has participated in a previous cleanup is more
valuable to me because he or she already knows
what needs to be done and how to 
approach it.” Last year
one out of every four volunteers at chapter
cleanups was a repeat volunteer.
“I give each group of volunteers a clearly
defined objective and try to be cognizant of
their physical limitations,” says Riley.
“Some chapter members are very gung ho and
have no problem wrestling a 150-pound tractor
tire out of the water, but I wouldn’t send a
young student into the water to do that. I
provide them with water, gloves, and tools and
make sure they don’t get tired out too
quickly. Sometimes there’s a strategy. With
kids, if you’re walking them to a point
downstream and then back to the parking lot
again, it is best to discourage them from
picking up trash until the return trip so they
are
carrying the trash the
shortest distance possible. Whenever possible,
I use water craft to transport trash rather
than having volunteers carry it for long
distances.” Riley also defines the time
commitment for each event.
“Ironically, it is sometimes easier to get
people to turn out for a cleanup when the
weather is bad,” says Riley. “One of our
best turnouts at a stream cleanup was in the
pouring rain. When we had a nice day last
spring after a hard winter, many people took
that opportunity to do something else.”
Another great tool for recruiting volunteers
is to promote successes. Riley has a Web site
dedicated to chapter cleanup events where he
posts pictures of the volunteers at work, the
results of past events such as weight of trash
collected and numbers of participants, and a
schedule of future events. You can take a cue
from Riley’s Web site at http://waterquality.awardspace.com/.