A cane pole, fishing line, rusty hooks, and lots of corks, no it’s not a fishing supply list, it’s only some of the items found during the Clarendon Conservation Youth Board’s Beach Sweep/River Sweep clean up event at Taw Caw Creek Park recently. “We expected to find a little bit of trash throughout the park, but as the bags began to overflow and literally bust, we knew we had our work cut out for us,” Casey Blackmon, Clarendon Soil and Water Conservation District manager said. “With one boat landing, four fishing piers, a playground, picnic shelters, and a boardwalk, the park proved to be no small task.”
Youth Commissioners and other volunteers searched from the parking lot to the waters edge and ended up with 15 bags of trash, a cane pole, and an old tire. Most of the trash was found throughout the wooded areas surrounding the boardwalk, as youth members ventured out onto the soft muddy surface that would usually be covered with water and retrieved everything from beverage cans to cooler lids. At last tally they had picked up over 200 beverage bottles and cans, 57 bait containers, 43 food wrappers, 34 bags (paper or plastic), and a surplus of cigarette filters, tobacco wrappers, fishing line, corks and nets, feminine products, plates, forks, clothing, and shotgun shells.
Pictured standing from left to right are: Valerie Green, Tori Prosser, Robert Griffin, Youth Advisor Casey Blackmon, Jessica Witherspoon, Leroy (volunteer), Cody Simpson, Billy (volunteer), Sheldon Morris and kneeling Kristin Briones (volunteer) .