Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Ellen Compton of Albany leaned over the side of the driftboat offshore at Andrew S. Wiley Park, on the South Santiam River just above the mouth of Wiley Creek Saturday morning.
She stabbed at something in the water with a pair of long-handled grippers. Up came a beer can.
“Got it,” she exulted.
Compton and nine other members of the local Association of Northwest Steelheaders chapter spent part of Saturday cleaning trash off the banks and out of the bed of the river and feeder creeks between Sweet Home and Lebanon’s Grant Street Park. They were assisted by seven Wal-Mart employees, said Don Wenzel of Albany, the Steelheaders treasurer. Some Steelheaders spent Thursday doing river cleanup as well.
“We’ve got crews working up and down the river,” said Wenzel. “We’re sending boats down the river.”
Compton and Duane Davis of Lebanon floated along the shore near the park, picking up litter along the banks and out of the water.
Wenzel said the bulk of the six pickup loads of garbage the group collected, in some 100 man-hours, came from the banks. He said he and two other members went up Wiley Creek, where they found three dump sites.
“It’s domestic garbage, mostly,” he said. The group found beer cans, “lots of water bottles,” tires and “at least four syringes floating in the river.” In previous years, trash pulled out of the river has included car batteries, sleeping bags, towels, half a grocery cart and “some industrial-type machinery that probably weighed 100 pounds.”
“You never know what you’re going to find,” he said.
The Northwest Steelheaders, a group dedicated to enhancing and preserving local fisheries and fish habitat, generally do the cleanup each fall, he said.
Wenzel said the river seemed a little cleaner this year, but he attributed that to the fact that the salmon and steelhead runs have been poor this year, drawing less fishermen.
Still, he said, most of the trash comes from “the party group.
“A lot of this is coming from people who are not fishermen,” Wenzel said.