By Mike Morsch, Regional Editor
Sally O’Grady put on her boots and grabbed her gloves. She crawled under bushes and trees along the stream in Cranbury, getting muddy and attracting the attention of several ticks., For two hours, she picked up bottles, cans, plastic bags, pieces of metal and a long-discarded Frisbee. At one point, she even helped pull an old tire out of the stream., And in the end, she believed she made a difference., O’Grady was among more than 70 volunteers who participated in the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association’s 11th annual stream cleanups in honor of Earth Day., The Cranbury Township event April 22 — one of many throughout the region over consecutive weekends — started in Village Park. The Cranbury volunteers ended up filling 60 bags of litter, which equaled about 490 pounds of trash. The most common type of litter found in Cranbury was plastic bottles and cigarette butts., “Our stream is much cleaner because of our efforts and those of the other groups who helped that day,” said O’Grady, a member of the Cranbury Parks Department. “I know this garbage threatens the wildlife and fish in our streams and I believe it’s important to protect them.”, Cranbury has 11 parks and open spaces that comprise more than 230 acres. More than half the parks have hiking trails., Volunteers cleaned up Village Park, behind the firehouse, along South Main Street on the East Windsor border and around the Cranbury School. Although volunteers were dispersed throughout a general area, the main focus was the park and Brainerd Lake., “Cleaning up litter through volunteer efforts is important for many reasons. Besides the engagement of the general public in our work to protect water quality, removing trash from our natural environment prevents potential harm to aquatic and terrestrial wildlife,” said Brittany Musolino, river-friendly coordinator at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association., Litter also is a big contributor to polluted stormwater runoff and can end up clogging storm drains, according to Musolino. “People don’t realize when they throw trash in a particular area, it’s not going to stay there. It will end up in our waterways and even the ocean, where litter is a big problem.”, In 2016, more than 600 volunteers from 11 different area towns helped keep waterways safe by gathering and disposing of 5,565 pounds of trash, according to the Watershed Association. To date, stream cleanups have been effective in clearing 39 tons of trash and unwanted waste from local streams and rivers., In addition to Cranbury, stream cleanup efforts were also held in Millstone Township, Plainsboro Township, East Windsor Township, Princeton and West Windsor Township on April 22. Upcoming cleanup efforts for April 29 include Hightstown, Montgomery Township, Franklin Township and Lawrence Township., “We’re excited by the energy and enthusiasm of volunteers to improve the health of our local waterways during stream cleanups,” said Jim Waltman, executive director of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association. “Clean water is essential for people, wildlife, fish and aquatic life to flourish.”, For more information about the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, visit its website at www.thewatershed.org.
