The Brentwood Noon Rotary Club 4th Annual Little Harpeth River Cleanup, held Saturday, March 6th, was a tremendous success because of the many volunteers and organizations that participated in the event. The Williamson County Parks and Recreation Department allowed us to use the Indoor Sports Complex to organize the event. Keep Williamson Beautiful provided the vests, gloves, and trash bags. The City of Brentwood helped coordinate the on street parking at various locations along the river. The Brentwood Police and Fire departments were on hand in the event that emergency services were needed.
There were 91 volunteers divided into 9 teams that cleaned 20 miles of river bank (10 miles each side). We collected 73 bags of trash and some miscellaneous items totaling approximately 2,400 pounds.
In addition to the Rotary Club membership participation, we had volunteers from the following organizations:
Overton High School Interact Club
Brentwood High School Interact Club
Boy Scout Troop 86
Boy Scout Troop 93
Girl Scout Troop 1660
Cub Scout Pack 297
Numerous individual volunteers
Skip Heibert, organizer of the event says:
"It was great to see all the volunteers come together for such a worthy cause, but really is a shame that we have to coordinate this event at all. The amount of trash we find each year should be an embarrassment to all the citizens of Brentwood. Too many people are using our river as a dumping ground with no regard for our neighbors downstream. I hope this event helps people realize that just one soft drink can or plastic bag they toss really adds up on just our short 10 mile stretch of river. We removed 2,400 pounds of trash this year which is about the same amount we removed last year. Our goal is to educate our citizens to be better stewards of this wonderful resource. Then, hopefully, in the not too distant future, this event will not be necessary."
