In the summer months, we scout the waterways for future river cleanups. Each time it rains the waterways change, new strainers and trash appear. On these outings, we're also on the lookout for illegal dumping, straight piping and hazards for other paddlers.
On Monday's scouting mission, we uncovered a nest of submerged tires on Section 5 of the Swannanoa River (just down from Biltmore) Being on a scouting mission, we had only the one canoe. Undaunted we pulled so many tires from the water that we overloaded the one canoe and were forced to beach the tires until we could come back with reinforcements.
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| American Sycamore reaching across the Swannanoa River |
Flash forward to today's outing, 4 people, 3 canoes and strapping gear. We weren't leaving without those tires. After paddling down to the nest we lashed the boats together, then loaded the trash and tires.
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| Going to a better place (the recycler) |
In all we pulled out the remaining 17 tires (and other trash) and made a positive dent in the water quality of the Swannanoa River. Fun Fact, tires contain heavy metals and under the right circumstances say buried in a river, the tires will photodegrade, sloughing off layers of vulcanized rubber and harmful heavy metals into the water. GreenWorks Volunteers haul out around 2,000 tires from our rivers and streams each year. Clearly tire dumping is still a major problem in Buncombe County.
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| The Trimaran (trash barge) at Jean Webb Park |
After unloading the tires and garbage at Jean Webb Park, we packed up the gear and headed for a late lunch at El Chapala in Biltmore.
Another very tiring (bad pun) day with the GWorks.
