Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991 TAG: 9104210050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"We're more reliable than the Farmer's Almanac for predicting wet weather," the Clean Valley Council's Ellen Aiken said as volunteers trickled by Smith Park in Roanoke to pick up a soft drink, listen to a bluegrass band and watch a puppet show.
"The weather just doesn't seem to want to cooperate with us."
Still, Aiken found a silver lining in the clouds: Even though the weather kept many of them home on Saturday, more than 700 people had signed up in advance to pick up trash on the banks of the Roanoke River, in parks and vacant lots and along roadways.
There were student groups from Roanoke College, Hollins College and Northside High School, civic and neighborhood organizations, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and church groups.
And this year, for the first time, the Clean Valley Council and the Coalition for a Clean River had a joint clean-up effort. The Clean Valley Council has sponsored Clean Valley Day each spring since 1978. But in the past, the river cleanup has been in the fall, near the anniversary of the devastating flood of November 1985.
Tom Clarke, Roanoke's environmental coordinator, helped teen agers and parents from St. Paul's Episcopal Church cleanup a mile-long stretch of East Riverside Drive along the Roanoke River in Salem.
They stumbled upon duck eggs in the tall grass - but also railroad ties, TV sets, tires . . . even a child's inflatable pool.
"It was pretty fun," Salem High School ninth-grader Sally Agner said. "It makes you mad to see all the garbage."
William Hackley Jr. of the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership helped neighborhood organizations clean up vacant lots and alleys in Northwest Roanoke. They found refrigerators, freezers, fences - enough to fill two city garbage trucks.
Andy Millar, a resident in psychology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, recently took the exams to become a licensed clinical psychologist. "I wanted to get out and do something besides study," he said, so he picked up trash along Wiley Drive in Roanoke.
What did he find? "Mostly junk from fishermen," he said - cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, bait containers and beer cans. Oh yes: and an automobile timing belt.
It's discouraging to realize the river bank will be covered with trash again by this time next year, he said.
Indeed, it didn't take long for the litterbugs to crawl back out. Barely an hour after Millar had passed by, someone had dropped a plastic Pepsi bottle and a foam cup along the roadside.
by CNB