Cayuga Lake and its creeks are at the heart and center of our lives, and need our celebration and protection. The Cayuga Lake Watershed Network urges people to embrace Cayuga Lake with creek and lakefront cleanups. Beginning in mid-April 2010, community groups “Embraced the Lake” with numerous creek and waterfront cleanups. View the slide show below and go to www.cayugalake.org for more information.

Mid-April: Cayuga Lake waterfront in Aurora – Peachtown Elementary School students and teachers picked up lakefront trash from the Wells College Boat House to Payne’s Creek. Barb Post reports: “I had fun hoisting the largest carp skull I’ve seen on a stick for the little boys who were working!  I also found some beautiful goose wing bones.”

Mid-April: Mill Creek and other King Ferry-area creeks draining to the lake – the Direct Streams water monitoring group and neighbors, a Girl Scout troop, and Poplar Ridge Friends worked over several weeks to collect trash from these steep, beautiful creeks. Ronda Fessenden helped with trash disposal.

April 16-18: Fall Creek in Dryden – Members of the Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition (DRAC) cleaned up trash at several creekside Dryden nature preserves – the Genung, Etna, and Campbell preserves – and at the parking area next to Fall Creek below the Route 13 bridge.

May 1: Cascadilla Creek tributary in Ellis Hollow – Girl Scout Troop 1107 trekked down the creek bed to gather trash and a wild assortment of mystery items, and made a pile of recyclable metals, including car body parts and bedsprings.

May 8: Fall Creek below Ithaca Falls – Trout Unlimited reeled in a strange assortment of banged-up items, and caught a bunch more down at the Cayuga Street bridge.

May 8: Wells Campus creeks that run to the lake, Aurora – The Campus Greens report: “We collected over 10 bags of trash and recyclables as well as 4 tires, what we suspect to be some sort of muffler, some scrap metal, shoes, and other strange stuff. We faced the storm, cleaned up the creeks on and surrounding campus, and everyone received prizes.”

Coming this fall: Seneca-Cayuga Canal in downtown Seneca Falls – The Mynderse Academy (Seneca Falls high school)’s Envirothon Team will do a fall cleanup as the tourism season winds down.

Thank You to: 

• Ray Benjamin, Ithaca Streets and Facilities; and Jack Bush, Dryden Highway Department, for picking up the trash!
• Ludgate Farms Gourmet Country Market for providing snacks to the Fall Creek and Cascadilla cleanups!

Embrace the Lake: Is your group interested in doing a creek cleanup on one of the 34 major creeks that drain to Cayuga Lake, a lakeshore cleanup, or along one of the many hundreds of smaller creeklets and streams that give their waters to Cayuga Lake? The Network supplies “Embrace the Lake” posters and flyers, gloves, trash bags from American Rivers, and snacks. We help with publicity, and make the contact for trash pick-up afterwards.

Spring and mid-late fall are best, when creekside vegetation is not too high. Plan ahead for fall 2010 or spring 2011! Contact Hilary Lambert at steward@cayugalake.org

 

 

TAGGED WITH: Aurora, Campus Greens, Cascadilla Creek, Cayuga Lake, community event, creek cleanups, Ellis Hollow, Fall Creek, Ithaca, King Ferry, Mill Creek, no frack, Trout Unlimited