In honor of Earth Day, Montgomery County Conservation District staff got their hands dirty picking up litter and debris in a preserved property along a tributary to Skippack Creek.  The event was part of Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy’s annual Stream Cleanup, a 700+ volunteer event which seeks to clean streams and raise awareness of litter in our waterways.

During the cleanup, district staff located an old dump site and removed items from along the road, such as tires, car parts, road signs, electric cable, and hundreds of glass bottles and aluminum cans.  They also found a discarded jar of gasoline and piles of improperly dumped yard waste.  These finds indicate that litter and illegal dumping continue to be a huge hurdle for our waterways.  Not only is trash- especially hazardous waste- harmful to wildlife and the quality of our drinking water supplies, dumping yard waste can spread exotic weed seeds that can invade natural areas and destroy ecosystems.

Check out the County’s website for proper recycling and disposal methods and for tire and  household hazardous waste collection events.

Events like PWC’s Stream Cleanup are crucial to connecting people to our water resources and educating residents on responsible disposal practices.  In total, volunteers from the event removed three full dumpsters worth of trash, several tons of scrap metal, and more than 100 tires from the watershed.

Interested in volunteering for a cleanup?  Sign up for the KOP Cleanup on May 2!

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