Good, clean fun: Removing trash from the Rahway River

“The first thing to remember is to have fun,” instructed South Orange Environmental Commissioner Walter Clarke when I reported for the town’s annual River Day on May 1. My daughter and I, and our friends, were participating in the river clean-up for the first time. The friendly Commissioners at the check-in table handed us a bucket for the trash we would find in the East Branch of the Rahway River, which runs through South Orange, New Jersey.

The sun was beaming in a blue sky, and the trees lining the river were bursting into leaf. My group made our way through the foliage along the river’s banks down to the water, where the kids waded gamely in.

Sadly, we found plenty of trash, from tiny shards of glass that were underfoot everywhere to face masks, pieces of plastic, and even a rusted, crusty Volvo key. It all went into our bucket, which got heavy quickly.

Those actual drops in the bucket, and those of the roughly 300 other volunteers cleaning the river that day, added up to more than a figurative “drop in the bucket”. Not only does the river supply drinking water to the 26,500 people in the city of Rahway, but the water and its banks are home to many birds, animals, and plants. Red-winged blackbirds sang as we cleaned up their habitat, and tiny fish darted around in the shallow water.

 According to the South Orange Environmental Commission, volunteers removed an estimated 1.2 tons of trash from the river that day. River Day is a great example of the power of community stewardship of natural resources, and also the joy of joining others to improve the place we live. We followed Walter’s “have fun” instructions so fastidiously that my daughter is already asking when we can clean up the river again.