11-14-18
We hosted our final river clean up earlier today... Today's event was the third clean up event hosted this season...
The event attracted 219 volunteers today... Approximately 900 pounds of trash was removed from the river by volunteers...
Armstrong Bank, Georgia-Pacific Paper, Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, Reasor's Food Warehouse, Save the Illinois River, Inc. and Illinois River Area Commercial Flotation Device Operators partnered with us for the three clean up events... Each of these organizations contributed greatly in making the events successful. Armstrong Bank provided a new 17' Osage Canoe that was given away as a grand prize... The winner of the canoe was Cecilia Wilson... Cecilia is from Hulbert, OK... She participated with her husband and children in the event...
Richard Keck, John Freese, Rebecca Coleman, April Hathcoat and Suzan Morang from the Cherokee Nation Environmental Programs were recognized for their extraordinary efforts at all three events... They picked up an enormous amount of trash this summer... Just the pop and beer cans policed from the river by this group would have filled up approximately 5 canoes completely to capacity. I remember the clean ups in 1980's and 1990's where approximately the same number of volunteers participated in the annual events... Back then, volunteers were policing tons of trash... One event collected well over two thousand bags of trash...
The good news to report is the river is much cleaner of litter and trash these days... Stakeholders definitely are contributed more to the overall cleanliness of the river...
Thank you...
Ed Fite, Administrator
Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission
