Broken glass big polluter along river

FORT FRANCES—Last week, the Rainy River First Nations’ Watershed program hosted “The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup” to tidy the shores of the Rainy River across the district.
Five groups of about 35 people participated from Riverview School, Sturgeon Creek School, Crossroads School, Donald Young School, and a Rainy River First Nations group, which included students, parents, and community officials.
Project officer Mark Vancook noted about 300-400 pounds of garbage was collected, with broken glass topping most lists made by the participants.
“I’ve complied the findings from each outing and I will send it to Toronto, where they’ll tabulate the national totals and break it up into what percentages were what kind of garbage,” Vancook explained Monday.
“They are interested in seeing the progress and they’re curious of what is out there because they can break it down by usage.”
Vancook indicated there are sections for cigarette waste, cars, recreational usage (paper cups, plates, food wrappers), and river and lake usage (boat parts, fishing nets).
“They want to see where the garbage is coming from, as well as trying to keep tabs on how much was pulled out,” he added.
In La Vallee, the local cleanup, which was spotlighted on CBC Radio, saw about 166 broken glass bottles collected.
“It’s hard to tell when they are broken,” Vancook noted. “There weren’t that many food wrappers because it wasn’t near a park, but we did find 55 plastic sheets or tarps there.”
Vancook added one of the three Crossroads groups also came across an old farm dump.
“We found well over 500 tin cans—we actually ran out of bags before we ran out of cans and lost count quite quickly,” he remarked, adding the farm waste was not new.
“The tin cans were completely rusted over and the ones that weren’t, even some of the teachers couldn’t recognize the labels,” Vancook said. “So these were 50 years plus some of them.
“It wasn’t recent dumping, but this is what used to happen.
“We also found a lot of car parts along the water, again related to farm dumping,” Vancook remarked.
The groups cleaned along the shoreline of private land owners in La Vallee, so the garbage collected was mostly from boat activity—stuff that washed up.
But not all areas were as unkempt as some.
“The group farthest east [was] saying it was pretty clean out there,” noted watershed program co-ordinator Adam Scott. “But the group farthest to the west was coming across all sorts of stuff.
“So it just depended on which stretch you were at.”
Other groups, such as the ones in Emo and Barwick, tidied around parks. Vancook noted these areas were relatively clean, with just a bit of trash along the shoreline.
However, Rainy River’s cleanup took place on the heels of the Rainy River Walleye Classic, which Vancook added was evident from the beer cans, cigarette butts, and candy wrappers collected there.
“We found 220 food wrappers, 18 buoys and floats, 127 cigarettes, 102 cigar tips, and some random things—21 plastic sheets, some sandbags, and fishing rods,” he listed.
They also discovered their “weirdest” item in Rainy River—a six foot long boat made entirely out of duct tape.
Both Vancook and Scott said the low water levels may have assisted in some of the findings.
“There was some added shoreline we had a chance to take a look at,” Scott noted.
“A lot of things that wouldn’t have shown up in previous years were visible,” echoed Vancook, citing things that don’t float—like car parts (i.e., tires, shocks, and even a boat hull)—were discovered.
“It went really well,” he continued. “The schools I contacted were all interested and had done it before. . . . And the kids were good.
“Some got tired because we did nearly a three-mile walk with one group, but they were pretty enthusiastic,” Vancook said. “They understood what they were doing and why they were there.
“It was quite productive and the kids also got a good idea of what happens when you use the river and you don’t clean up after yourself.”
Vancook added there’s nothing he’d change about the week-long cleanup, except to possibly expand it next year.
“It was recommended we try to get a group to do somewhere along the shoreline in Alberton because there are no schools there and I went through schools, so there was no one to cleanup the shores there,” he noted.
“It would be nice if I could get a school to bus out to there, but it might be a bit tricky. It would also be great to get another school involved.”
(Fort Frances Times)