Feb 8, 2008 6:56 pm US/Central
Adopt-A-River Program Aims To Clean Trinity River
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Most people have seen signs about adopting a stretch of highway and keeping it clean and litter-free. Now, one group wants to apply the same idea to the Trinity River in Fort Worth.
"It looks clean from the road," said Erin Sanders of Gatlin Education Services, "but it's not clean when you get down here."
Trash has inevitably found its way to the banks of the Trinity River. The mess is a by-product of a lack of respect.
"Lots of plastic bags, lots of grocery sacks," Sanders said. "I found a left tennis shoe. I think they found two pairs of underwear over there."
Cleaning the river requires a lot of dedicated volunteers. So, the Tarrant Regional Water District is reaching out to the community. The water district broke the river up into 34 sections and started its 'Adopt-a-River' program.
Gatlin Education Services adopted one of the sections. "It's something that's become very near and dear to us and we wanted to do something as a company," said Mark Lamkin, also with Gatlin Education Services. "And it doesn't take a lot of people to make a significant impact when you do a project like this."
Kari Schmidt with the Tarrant Regional Water District explained, "All the people do is show up, they clean, they leave the bags and we take care of it from there on out."
With 13 sections left to adopt, the water district hopes that the community will respond. "Pretty soon, with a half dozen or so downtown companies and maybe civic groups, boy scouts or whatever, we can get this whole thing cleaned up and really make it the jewel that it really is for the whole community," Lamkin said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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