This is no place for garbage

More than 50 walking, wading volunteers devote their Saturday morning to ridding the waterfront of rubbish.

By LOGAN NEILL, Times Staff Writer
Published September 24, 2007

Richard Stauffer looks for trash as he walks along Aripeka Rd. Stauffer and other volunteers removed trash, including a stove, a computer, wire fencing and numerous bottles for deposit at the Hernando County Coastal Cleanup station in Linda Pederson Park.
	[ROSS MANTLE | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [ROSS MANTLE | Times] Cindy Lemke looks through brush for trash along Shoal Line Blvd. as her son D.J., 8, and daughter Raina, 11, look elsewhere. [ROSS MANTLE | Times] Madison Daniels, 7, and her grandmother Kathy Lambert carry trash out of a wooded spot along Aripeka Rd. for deposit at the Hernando County Coastal Cleanup station in Spring Hill.

HERNANDO BEACH - Holding it as far away from himself as he could, Anthony Carter carefully turned the dirt-encrusted bottle upside down and watched the contents spill to the ground. The label said Bud Light, but there was no telling what was really inside.

"I'm just glad I'm wearing gloves," said the Nature Coast Technical High School senior. "There's nothing out here you'd want to touch with your hands."

Within 30 minutes, Carter and the other six members of the school's Interact Club collected nearly 50 discarded beer bottles along a 300-yard stretch of Shoal Line Boulevard on Saturday morning during their part of the International Coastal Cleanup effort. They also found plenty of cans, plastic foam cups, fast-food containers and lots more, all within a few feet of the edge of Jenkins Creek.

"It's disappointing," said club president Kayla Kinney as she lugged a garbage bag filled with trash. "Some people just don't think about what they're doing to the environment. This stuff would have probably ended up in the water at some point."

More than 50 volunteers spent the morning scouring Hernando County's most-visited waterfront areas. In addition to the area surrounding Linda Pederson Park, other groups patrolled coves and bayous near Bayport Park and needle grass shallows near Aripeka.

"We're pleased with the turnout," said coordinator Julie Werts of the Nature Coast Conservancy. "We haven't done a cleanup in a while, so it was nice to see that the word got out."

Volunteers armed with plastic bags began their search shortly after 8 a.m. Most didn't have to look hard to find garbage.

Madeline Quinn waded in knee-deep muck in a small cove near Bayport Park to retrieve several chunks of what once was a plastic foam cooler. The Spring Hill resident said she decided to volunteer because couldn't stand to see such a pretty area spoiled by the sight of litter.

"You shouldn't have to have a special cleanup day," said Quinn, 55. "Who in their right mind would want to look at trash? It's just plain wrong."

An annual event in Hernando County since 1989, the cleanup was spearheaded by the Nature Coast Conservancy, the Hernando Audubon Society, the Nature Coast Sierra Club and the Hernando Native Plant Society.

Hernando Audubon Society conservation chairman Joe Murphy said hurricanes scrubbed plans for coastal cleanups in 2004 and 2005, and that last year's planned cleanup had to be called off because of scheduling conflicts.

"We're hoping to get back on track to make it an annual event," said Murphy, who helped organize a cleanup Saturday at the Cypress Lake Preserve in Ridge Manor. "People want to do it. We need to give them the outlet."

Werts said that time restrictions left her unable to find participants with watercraft to retrieve trash from waterways.

"That's something we're definitely going to pursue harder next year," Werts said. "There's a lot of stuff still out there that our crews just couldn't get to."

Logan Neill can be reached at lneill@sptimes.com or 848-1435.

[Last modified September 23, 2007, 20:25:13]