ATV trail riders, Green Mountain Club pull litter from Walloomsac
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By PATRICK McARDLE Staff Writer - Published: July 22, 2007
BENNINGTON – The kids from the Bennington Tutorial Center's Youth Horticulture Project were making the best of a beautiful Saturday afternoon spent digging trash out of the Walloomsac River and its banks when there were much less productive – and more fun – ways to spend a summer day.
It didn't take long though for the group of teenagers to lapse into good-natured ribbing. Josh Hatch, 19, of Bennington was quick to joke the that the club members were there because they had to be. The Youth Horticulture Project includes manning the stand at the Walloomsac Farmer's Market every weekend, Hatch explains, which is near the area of the river they're cleaning.
Matthew Falace, 16, of Bennington, was quiet up to this point before he interrupted.
"We're here because it's the right thing to do," he said. "And we care about the planet."
That puts a weekend of reading Harry Potter, watching the new Adam Sandler film and playing video games into perspective.
Fortunately for the Bennington County Conservation District and the Bennington Trail Conservancy, an all-terrain-vehicle users club, a number of people in the area shared the teens' commitment to the clean-up effort. About 30 people came out on Saturday to pull litter and garbage from the Walloomsac River, which cuts through the heart of Bennington.
Volunteers lugged a car battery, a manual typewriter, bicycles, tires, car doors, shopping carts, lawn mowers, a 55-gallon metal drum and a sword from the river in about three hours.
Shelly Stiles, district manager for the county's conservation district, pointed out that a wallet was found too. She planned to give it to the police.
It seemed an appropriate way to end a day of good deeds and community service. Stiles said it was gratifying to see the ATV group and hikers from the Green Mountain Club work together for the common good.
There was also some fun to be had as volunteers competed to win a "Gar-Badge" award for the most interesting or unusual item retrieved from the Walloomsac.
Barbara Hine and Lorna Cheriton, both with the Green Mountain Club, reviewed the items in the back of a cart to see if they might have a winner. They were pinning their hopes on a muddy baby buggy.
Still, it wasn't the prize that lured any of the three Bennington residents.
"I said it's about time I helped with the river clean-up. I've never done it before," Hine said.
For Cheriton, Saturday was an opportunity to get rid of some of the garbage she hates to see when she's kayaking along Bennington's waterways.
While the clean-up day was chosen in the hopes that the river would be low and slow, according to Stiles, recent rains washed away the hope that it would be an easy day.
That meant Jim Connelly, of Shushan, N.Y., and Tim Marr, who is with the county conservation district, had to work a little harder to wrest an unidentifiable metal object out of the river. They didn't complain but Connelly said he hoped people would recognize that ATV users are "green" too.
No one seemed to match Joshua Gorman's enthusiasm though. The watershed coordinator with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resource's Department of Environmental Conservation in the Water Quality Division had an energy that seemed to last longer than his title.
As he handled pieces of a refrigerator, Gorman praised the Walloomsac as a great spot for trout fishing.
"People around here love their water so they donated their Saturday to clean it up. … This is a great event. Hopefully, people will realize they need to pick up a little bit at a time and keep it clean," he said.
Mike Lynch, president of the Bennington Trail Conservancy, seemed satisfied with had been accomplished on Saturday. In addition to filling a Dumpster, volunteers had loaded up a 12-foot-trailer with scrap metal that was taken for recycling.
The metal can be used again. This time, it might even stay out of the Walloomsac.
Contact Patrick McArdle at patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com.
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