SUNBURY – 22 bags worth of plastic bottles, broken Styrofoam coolers, soda cans, fishing lines, shattered glass bottles and assorted personal hygiene items were what was found along Sunbury’s shoreline Saturday. This litter was exposed after the tall wildflowers, and milkweed in the riparian buffer zone was cut back and sprayed with herbicide as part of the Sunbury Municipal Authority’s controversial clearing of ‘woody material.’
Photo courtesy Carol Parenzan, Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper
Carol Parenzan, the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper, organized a dedicated group of volunteers from the community to go down to the river walk and clean up this mess on Saturday instead of preparing for the fireworks celebration that was scheduled on the river that night. She said the amount of trash was one thing, but the lack of caring from the city is what really bothered her, “What I found alarming was that there was no manpower or available time from the city to do this clean up and the intention was to just leave it sitting there. It was really quite unsightly.”
Parenzan put out a call on social media and six people responded. Those six people including Parenzan herself, took 90 minutes to complete the task.
In addition to being the Riverkeeper, which is a full time job that has Parenzan being responsible for over 11,000 square miles of the Susquehanna River watershed, she says the reason she did this was more about pride, “I wanted to do our fair share, and make our river bank the beauty that they are. The Susquehanna is our focal point for the community and we should have some pride in that.”
Carol Parenzan is still looking into the cause of the cutting back of the riparian buffer zone and why the wildflowers had to be killed. We’ll have more about her findings next week on WKOK. (Christopher Elio)
