A clean sweep: Volunteers say Silver Creek clean up effort showing progress in Clarksville

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Christian Napier, left, Christopher West, Gregory Driver and Steve Driver with Boy Scout Troop 1 from Jeffersonville look for debris in a ravine at the Silver Creek Clean Sweep on Saturday. The annual event is sponsored by the Clarksville Parks Department and the Knob and Valley Audubon Society. Staff photo by C.E. Branham
David Coyte with the Knob and Valley Audubon Society displayed mature fresh water mussel shells he found that are indicative of an improving ecosystem in Silver Creek. Staff photo by C.E. Branham
David Coyte with the Knob and Valley Audubon Society, co-sponsors of the event, wades through Silver Creek during the clean sweep. Staff photo by C.E. Branham

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July 24, 2010

By DAVID A. MANN David.Mann@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Sat Jul 24, 2010, 07:16 PM EDT

JEFFERSONVILLE — White socks weren’t meant to stay white forever.

That was the message that one local youngster shouted out as members of Jeffersonville’s Boy Scout Troop 1, climbed through mud and water on the banks of Silver Creek Saturday morning.

The order of the day: If you find trash, pick it up and get it off the creek bank.

“We’re Boy Scouts, we love the environment,” said Brent Mode. “It’s a great planet,” he added, calling the creek an example of a natural resource that had been disturbed.

Fellow Scout Christian Napier chimed in: “If people keep polluting it, the river won’t be here for future generations to enjoy.”

The Scouts were just a few of the dozens of volunteers on hand at Clarksville’s Lapping Park on Saturday for the Silver Creek Clean Sweep, a joint effort of the Knob and Valley Audubon Society and the Clarksville Parks Department. The clean up has been an annual event for the last eight years.

If the socks are getting dirty, it seems the creek may be getting clean. At least in some of the areas where the Boy Scouts were, finding trash seemed to be a difficult assignment.

“It’s definitely getting better,” said Rod Goforth, the Audubon Society’s conservation chair, who helped organize the effort. “I think we’ll have a good impact.”

In years past volunteers have found old tires, computer monitors, glass and just about anything else he said. Though it’s hard to put an official number on it, volunteers usually lug up about 10 pounds each during past events, he said.

“Sometimes the [litter] pile’s as big as a car.”

For volunteers, the reward at the end of the day — aside from the feeling of accomplishment — was a free t-shirt and a slice or two of pizza. However, the effort has been much more rewarding for the local ecosystem.

David Coyte, a fellow Audubon volunteer, picked up and inspected a handful of mussel shells as the clean up was taking place.

The fact that there were so many different types was indicative of an improving environment, he said.

In past years, “we would have seen some. I don’t know that we’d have seen quite the variety.”

Coyte, who noted that he was not an expert on mussels, said it was difficult to tell by looking at the shells if any of those found on the creek were endangered species.

The clean sweep took only a few hours on Saturday. Goforth, who’s also a biology teacher at Seneca High School in Louisville said he also plans to give some of the younger volunteers a lesson on the various types of marine life in the water following the event.

The clean sweep takes place every July. For more information on the society, check out kavaudubon.org.

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A clean sweep: Volunteers say Silver Creek clean up effort showing progress in Clarksville

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