Sunday, October 1, 2006 — Volunteers from across Stanly County will be cleaning up local waterways next Saturday.

From 9 a.m. to noon, Oct. 7, local crews will join thousands of North Carolinians picking trash and debris along state waterways.

Trash causes problems for wildlife and people.

Brandy Belville, a ranger at Morrow Mountain State Park and coordinator for Stanly County’s Big Sweep effort, said organizers want to educate the public so that the waterways are not the recipient of trash and litter.

“This year the theme of Big Sweep is ‘Follow us to a cleaner North Carolina’,” Belville said.

“We want to educate and motivate North Carolinians to change their behavior to achieve litter free waterways,” Belville said.

“Stewardship of our coastal and inland waterways is vital for the health of our ecosystem.”

Spots in Stanly County Belville wants to cover this year are Morrow Mountain State Park, Montgomery Park, Badin Lake, Falls Reservoir, the wildlife boat ramp on Whitney Road and the “Shipwreck” area on Lake Tillery.

Belville said she needs people to volunteer as zone captains to organize each clean up area. Other volunteers are needed to help the zone captains.

“The more volunteers we get, the more we can clean up,” Belville said. “Five to ten persons per location are needed.”

Last year, volunteers cleaned trash along 14 miles of waterways in Stanly County, collecting 61 bags of trash weighing in at 1,200 pounds. The areas cleaned up last year were the “Shipwreck” area near Cook’s Marina on Lake Tillery, Morrow Mountain, Badin Lake, and Falls dam.

Last year’s statewide cleanup effort netted 14,000 volunteers and collected 447,653 pounds of trash and debris along 1,714 miles of waterways.

Across the state, the most common items picked up last year were cigarette butts, food wrappers and beverage cans.

Locally, the most common items were cigarette butts, aluminum cans, and fishing line, according to Belville.

“Flicking a cigarette butt in the lake is not an innocent thing,” Belville said.

Belville said wildlife researchers found a Chickadee nest made from the fibers of cigarette butts.

“The fibers made good nesting material for the bird,” she said. “The nicotine from the filters leached into the eggs and killed the chicks.”

Belville said if a single cigarette butt is put into a two-gallon container, it would kill all invertebrates placed in the container.

Litter has a direct impact on local economics.

“Litter contaminates our water supply and it hurts our local economies, especially tourism and new business recruitment.”

The litter and debris creates other problems as well.

“Wildlife is endangered in many ways. It causes hazards for hikers and people enjoying the waterways,” Belville said.

“Discarded fishing line is one of the most common hazards to wildlife found during cleanups.”

Wildlife can become entrapped or get tangled up in the discarded line, Belville said. She said 90 percent of the floating debris found is plastic and resembles food to wildlife.

“Ingesting the plastic is harmful to wildlife,” Belville said.

Belville said she would like to see year-round efforts to help the county’s waterways.

Groups can “adopt” a waterway through North Carolina’s Division of Water Resources’ Stream Watch Program.

“Year-round stewardship of our streams in the county is needed to help keep our waterways clean and healthy for wildlife and for people,” Belville said. “We need more than a once a year cleanup.”

The organization can be contacted at (919) 733-4064, information about the Stream Watch program can be found at www.ncwater.org.

The North Carolina Big Sweep has for the past 19 years organized a state wide clean up. North Carolina Big Sweep started in 1987 as Beach Sweep, a costal cleanup with 1,000 volunteers. In 1989 the cleanup expanded inland and was renamed North Carolina Big Sweep, this was the nations first statewide waterway cleanup.

The Big Sweep is part of a much larger international effort called the International Costal Cleanup, last year 500,000 volunteers from more than 70 countries participated in the event.

To help in the North Carolina Big Sweep on Oct. 7 in Stanly County contact Brandy Belville at Morrow Mountain State park at 704-982-4402.