Community members gather to clean debris and buildup from First Dam
A group of about 30 anglers, outdoor enthusiasts and other community members met in the rain at 9 a.m., Saturday, to clean the debris and buildup out of First Dam. Chadd VanZanten, lead volunteer coordinator for Cache Anglers, briefed the group on safety and their assignments as they prepared to clean garbage from the Logan River.
“It’s hard to get people excited about picking up other people’s garbage. I kind of learned that at home with my kids,” VanZanten said, after thanking the volunteers for coming to the service project.
The event in Logan Canyon was a part of a National Stream Cleanup Day, a nationwide service project sponsored by Trout Unlimited, a volunteer organization that focuses on cleaning and restoring fishing areas in the U.S. The local chapter of Trout Unlimited — Cache Anglers — chose Logan River as the site of its cleaning efforts.
“If you spend any time at all in Logan Canyon, you know the area needs help; it needs attention,” said Cache Anglers President Paul Holden, in a statement promoting the event, earlier this month.
VanZanten said he agreed with that sentiment. After the volunteers separated to work on different segments of the river, VanZanten walked around the east end of the reservoir and began picking up garbage from the muddy bank.
“This canyon is just a mess all the time,” he said. “If you can come up here and not see a big wad of fishing line, and not see worm cups and cans in the river, it’s unusual.”
VanZanten said he was pleased with the number of volunteers who showed up, when bad weather and competing weekend interests might have kept them away.
“It was a very light turnout last year, but we still got about 10 big bags of garbage just from three campgrounds,” VanZanten said.
The group often finds strange items while doing the cleanup, he said.
“What else did we find that we couldn’t figure out how somebody lost it?” he said. “I guess just the babydoll and the underwear. And then about five dozen single flip-flops.”
VanZanten said he comes to the river often to fish, and he monitors the level of pollution around the area.
“I think it’s not as bad as it has been in past years, maybe because the summer kind of got started late this year, and there haven’t been as many people around,” he said.
“There’s always a lot of litter up here, but, relatively speaking, there wasn’t as much.”
First Dam Park is one of the more heavily used areas, so it often has more litter in it, VanZanten said. Even in the rain Saturday morning, two other groups used the park as the cleanup went on: engineering students tested out their concrete canoes, while another group fished from the pier.
Pollution in Logan River is nothing new, VanZanten said. It’s caused by recreational users as well as other natural and man-made factors.
In “The Last Unspoiled Place,” a book about Logan Canyon by Michael Sweeney, in 1902, Cache Valley resident Moroni Price said about the source of drinking water, “I have about reached a decision to drink whiskey from now on.”
While government regulations and industrial practices have changed the way the river is polluted over the years, modern volunteer organizations such as Cache Anglers still see the need for service in areas like Logan Canyon, VanZanten said.
Heather Farrell and her husband John Farrell brought their two small children to the cleanup. The Farrells chose First Dam Park as their assignment in the cleanup. The Farrells, who live nearby, said that they often take their children for walks to the park, and they notice the garbage left there.
“We’ve been thinking all along, ‘Oh, we should do something to clean it up,’ so it was really nice to see that somebody had it organized,” John Farrell said. He is a USU graduate student studying environmental engineering.
John Farrell said while he doesn’t like the litter, he does like the opportunity for service.
“It’s good to have the kids come out here and learn how to keep the environment clean,” he said.
Heather Farrell said she felt frustration that the litter in the canyon was so bad.
“You just wish that people would care enough. It’s not that hard to pick up your garbage,” she said.
– steve.kent@aggiemail.usu.edu