Second Annual Spring River Cleanup
April 23rd, 2022
On a beautiful morning in April, several volunteers from the GVPC converged on the river for the second annual spring river cleanup. We got lucky on the weather, just the day before there was a nasty spring storm with high winds and rain/snow/Armageddon off and on throughout the day. There were multiple discussions about rescheduling the cleanup but there was a lot of stuff in place and the forecast looked good for the day of. We pushed through and woke up to a great looking day, though it did get a little windy as the day went on. That’s spring in Colorado for you, you can never predict the weather. Fortunately, most local boaters have learned to overcome and still power through even the toughest of conditions. I mean, what’s a little wind?
We set off on three stretches of the Colorado River through the Grand Valley focusing most of our energy on the Las Colonias to Blue Heron stretch that is always the worst. All told we estimate that 28 yards of trash was removed from the river that day thanks to our amazing volunteers. So much trash was picked up between the Las Colonias Boat Ramp and Watson Island (less than 1 mile down river) that the crew had to pull over and dump the barge creating another pile to pick up later. They then filled the barge again before making it to Blue Heron. The other two stretches also hauled off a lot with the Corn lake to Las Colonias stretch almost doubling last spring’s load.
We had a minor mishap with the dumpsters getting canceled the day before but Monument Waste Services stepped up at 3:40 Friday afternoon cutting $1,000 off the normal fee to help us keep it under budget. They couldn’t drop off the dumpsters till Monday so at the end of each stretch we left the trash at the ramps for volunteers to come back out to load, but at least we had pickup. The City of Grand Junction Parks Department was a big help on Monday coming out with a backhoe and dump truck to help pick up the piles, including the cache at Watson Island. Our city parks department really is awesome!
The Colorado River Cleanup (CRC) has been going on every summer for the last 18 years, started informally by a handful of local boaters. Over the years it has been organized by a few different people and organizations, including the W.A.T.E.R. Club for many years, until 2017 when the GVPC took the reins for a bit. In 2021 Sarah Stokes floated the river with some friends and like most of us she was appalled by the amount of trash she saw along the river. She started to reach out to local boaters and with the help of Tor Larson and Bill Cort she held the first annual spring cleanup and it was a smash with around 70 people showing up to remove trash along the river. With the formation of a new board of the GVPC Sarah and Tor were obvious choices and it was clear that there was community support for 2 river cleanups a year, maybe more. This opened a new chapter in the story of the cleanup efforts and it is great to see the community support not only from the volunteers that show up to clean but also the local businesses that give of their time and money to help improve our local river environment, none of this would be possible without this support.
Specail thanks to our organizing commitee:
Tor Larson
Sarah Stokes
Jacob Thaden
Bill Cort
Thank you to our sponsors:
