Every day is now clean-up day on the Bitterroot River.
Every year the Bitter Root Water Forum organizes a River Clean Up Day in which hundreds of volunteers in boats and on foot descend upon the river in a massive clean-up campaign and pull thousands of pounds of trash out of the Bitterroot River. Volunteers are assigned stretches of the river from Sula and Painted Rocks to the confluence at the Clark Fork in Missoula and last year pulled 2,360 pounds of trash out of the river. This year’s Annual River Clean-up Day is set for August 11.
In the meantime…
If you are heading out on the river and happen to stop by a local business on the way, be sure and pick up one of the bright red bags hanging from the wooden rack. They are free trash bags made to be useful out on the water and made to be re-usable.
Following the old adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” the Bitter Root Water Forum is placing the bags at businesses throughout the valley. BRWF Executive Director Heather Barber said that she believes a lot of littering is unintentional. People just get out on the river without thinking about the trash they are going to produce. She is thinking that, for a lot of people, just a little reminder, and a free trash bag to go with it, might be all that is needed to keep a lot of trash from going into the drink.
The bags are easy to see. They are the red ones hanging on stands made by the students of Hamilton High School Woodshop Instructor Russ Fisk.
Barber said that the effort was getting a lot of enthusiastic support from the business community. The program was funded by a Rapp Family Foundation grant.