Groups team up for spring clean up.

A slight morning chill and a steady drizzle did not deter more than 60 volunteers from making the annual spring clean-up of Veterans Memorial Park in Woodbridge highly-productive.

Prince William County residents of all ages joined employees of the Service Authority, Park Authority and Clean Community Council for the Adopt-a-Stream event last Saturday, April 24 from 9 a.m. to noon.

Participants removed 1,690 pounds of trash and debris from the 105-acre park, which includes wetlands and waterways. For the first time in the event’s three-year history, the clean-up area included Marumsco Acres Lake, which is in an area adjacent to the park.

Eleven “floating volunteers” took to the water in kayaks and flat-bottom boats armed with fishing net and trash grabbers to remove an additional 600 pounds of debris.

The majority of the litter and debris found and removed from both locations consisted of plastic bottles, aluminum cans, balls and tires, but one group of volunteers pulled a shopping cart from the mud.

“As an organization, our goal is to keep the community clean, and we wanted to expand from our land-based cleanups to water-based ones by partnering with well-respected organizations, like the Service Authority, whose environmental stewardship mission mirrors are own,“ said Kayne Kornbach, Director of Programs and Development for the Clean Community Council, which joined the clean-up for the first time this year.

Another first for this year’s event was gaining the support of four sponsors—Camp, Dresser and McKee, CH2M Hill, Pizzagalli Construction Company and Woodbridge Supervisor Frank J. Principi—whose donations helped to provide food, t-shirts and other supplies for the volunteers.

Kelly Jimenez, Adopt-a-Stream Coordinator for the Prince William County Soil and Water Conservation District, gave an interactive children’s presentation about preventing pollution in the watershed, while the Service Authority’s environmental masked mascot, Captain Recycle, posed for photos with volunteers.

“As opposed to the past two years when the weather on clean-up day was hot, this year Mother Nature gave us a cool morning with a few sprinkles, enabling volunteers to be more productive and remove trash from the harder-to-reach places,“ says Kendra Schlueter, the Service Authority’s Environmental Stewardship Team Leader and Adopt-a-Stream Coordinator. Solid evidence that productivity might have something to do with the way we view our environment.