Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (2-March-2016)

Set out to clean up a little more of the riverbank in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area. For my first stop I found an access to the McDade Trail that was right next to the small creek above. I followed the creek towards the river and it was spectacular. Crystal clear water, banks that looked untouched and very little trash.

The only items I found close to this creek were plastic pieces like this. They looked to be a liner and not just discarded garbage bags. 

It wasn't long until I was to the Delaware and part of me really wishes I just went the other way up the creek just to walk it to the source. I bet going upstream would have been just as nice.

Of course the bank of the Delaware was much different. The recent high waters left trash everywhere even above my head in some cases. 

With the amount of footwear I have found in the past two days I think I need to restate something from much earlier posts. If you decided to do a river trip, canoeing, kayaking or inner tubing, wear footwear that ties and secures well to your foot. Sandals, crocs and velcro shoes like the above come off easily and are often lost. Please wear the right shoes so I or someone else doesn't have to pick up your inappropriate footwear later. 

Debris piles after debris piles. Like the shoes I have to point out again that these are not safe to walk on. You never know what is inside a debris pile and they are often unstable and with a wrong step you might fall through. Some of the main concerns that can be found inside are syringes, other sharp objects and in the summer it is very common for wasps to nest in the spaces inside. I do pick through them, I know the risks and the safest ways of doing so. 

I noticed what I thought was a trash can from a distance. At the time I thought great! My trash bag was just about full and with a washed up trash can I could fill and carry that out too. It was a bit of a shock when I walked over to it. 

As I got closer I thought it was just someones rain barrel. Could fill that up with trash too. I went to upright it and it wouldn't budge. It was full. I looked at the top to see if I could find a label and there wasn't much left of one. At the time I couldn't figure out what it was, but it was something that I needed to report and decided my next stop after this one would be the park headquarters. 

Filled the pack and a bag and it was time to get back to the car. Penny was happy to get moving again. She spent the time while I was picking through the debris piles tiles to a tree. She was pretty calm today, not barking at me much, but often giving me odd stares. 

This was the haul for the first trip. More non-recyclables this time. After taking it all into the car it was off to the park headquarters. There I was greeted by a nice man behind the front desk. I explained I had found a full mystery barrel and where it was. He then called another gentleman and handed me the phone. I then explained again what I found, where it was and offered to take someone right to where it was. The gentleman on the phone explained it was nearing a shift change and he was busy right after, but it is something that is important and needs to be checked out. He then asked me to ask the nice man behind the desk to call the safety officer so I could talk to her and maybe she would want to check it out. The nice man called and handed me the phone. Once again I explained what I found and approximately where it was and she too said it was important and asked that I mark it on a map and leave my contact info. I did so and pulled up the photo of the barrel on my camera and wrote down what was left on the label. America's ______ 15W40. Seeing what I wrote down the nice man behind the counter said that's oil. Wonderful I thought. There is a 55 gallon full drum of most likely oil on the bank of the Delaware in a National Recreation Area and it is not a priority to take care of. That itself annoyed me, but the amount of park employees just standing around in the office across from the main desk and outside really made me mad. I would have been satisfied if they sent anyone out with me just to mark down the location. Where it is located is hard to navigate and it could be overlooked. I was not happy. I was also told that I need to fill out a new volunteer application to do future clean-ups within the recreation area. The way I look at it, just like no one had time to begin to take care of this oil issue, I didn't have time to fill out a volunteer form. I then went back to the Eshback Access and cleaned upriver today, which was actually more trashy than the downriver portion yesterday. 

Looking up river at the Eshback Access. This was one of my few views of the river. I spent most of my time looking down at the mud and debris piles on the bank. 

More oil. This time it was something I could actually remove. This was half full. 

The tire on the right is the first I have seen on these clean-ups in the park. I thought I would have come across more. I know that groups specifically removed tons of tires on this section of river and from what I have seen they did a really good job. You can see some of those tires now at the Pocono Environmental Education Center, they were used as siding on one of the buildings there. Minions, you can't even go down by the river to get away from them!  

The plastic bottles in this photo were all taken from one debris pile. Also in this photo, my shadow is being begged by Penny's shadow for treats. 

This was everything for the second trip. In all the total was around three trash bags full for the day. Not as much as yesterday, but I still met my goal of at least two bags. 

I do have to say that everyone that I talked to at the park headquarters were friendly, did take the time to listen to me and did say that the oil barrel will be taken care of. I understand that daily duties can limit what one can get done in a day. The main issue that makes me mad is that there were individuals around that could have at least got the process of its removal started today. That just by following me out there and recording the location. I do not have 100% confidence that the barrel will be found the first time someone goes out to look for it. I will be following up with e-mails to the park. 

If conditions are right tomorrow, I am going to do another recycling day. Really hoping it isn't windy. 
You too can help with taking out the trash! If you get out hiking take a grocery bag with you, give it a second use and fill it with trash while you are out! Every bit helps. You can also help contributing to this project here: Help Fund Taking Out the Trash

Like this blog? Like it on Facebook: Taking Out the Trash in Eastern PA

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (1-March-2016)

From what I saw at Gouldsboro and Tobyhanna State Parks on Sunday, I knew that the northeastern areas of PA are now snow free. With that in mind, I decided to head up to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The last time I was there on the Jacobsburg eagle watch program much of the recreation area was snow covered and I wanted to see how much trash was around now that it is gone. Since this is a longer trip I set my goal for the day at two garbage bags full of trash. I did not know what I was going to find, but I didn't want to go home without removing at least that much. My first stop in the recreation area was at the eagle nest pull off. I didn't see either of the pair that were on the nest on the last trip through. 

The site looked much cleaner with a coating of snow. There was a lot of trash between the pull off and the river. Even found another old 7-Up Bottle. 

I wouldn't say this was a good start. A good start would have been finding nothing at all. This gave me an idea of how the day was going to go though. This recreation area is part of the National Park Service, we as Americans should respect these areas much more than we do. There should be no litter left behind by anyone and where there is litter, more people should pitch in to help pick it up. 

The Delaware truly is a beautiful river. I love areas like this. As far as I could see not a single other person. Once the trash is eliminated in places like this, there isn't even a sign of people around. I think that would make this place much more spectacular. This was the second site in the recreation area, here there was a flat walkable bank. Not every access is like this and there is a lot of inaccessible shoreline in this section of the river. 

Newspapers. Multiple stacks of old, unread, bundled, newspapers. All but the plastic tie around it will biodegrade, so I left these. Had I found them right after they were discarded I would have taken them and turned them into compost. Why did this person have all of these newspapers? Why did they decide to take them and throw them down the bank of the river? Why do I constantly find things like this that just don't make sense?

 Much of the recyclables and styrofoam I found at this site were washed up in debris piles. From the debris line it looked like the river was very high during the last rain event. 

In a small pool on the riverside I found this freshwater mussel. The shells are a common site, but it isn't often that I see a live one with its foot out.

More than the first stop. After this I knew I was going to reach my goal. 

Took a walk down to check out this spring house before I moved on to the next site. There were only a couple bottles on the roadside down to it, but across the road next to a pond I noticed something about thirty feet off the road...

A mystery bag. The recreation area has trash receptacles at many of the accesses, so today I was taking everything I found. Seeing recyclables peaking out of some of the holes in the bag I was hoping that would be it and there wouldn't be any surprises in it. There was one surprise, a diaper. Wasn't pleased, but I bagged everything up and put it in the car. 

The Eshback Access was my final stop of the day and was another location that still had snow when we stopped on the eagle watch. It looks like the boat launch here will need a little work before the main boating season starts. Would be just a tad hard to get a larger boat out currently. 

Plastic netting. I am very tired, so that's about all I have to say about that.

I was hopping to see some ducks on this trip. I didn't, found duck tracks though. 

When I found the styrofoam container my garbage bag was nearly full. I left both and continued on to fill my pack. 

If it wasn't for views like this, this clean-up would have been completely miserable. 

I have found four or five fire extinguishers along the Delaware and Lehigh since I started this project. This is another trash item that I would like to know how they get into the river. Are they from boats? Do people just like throwing their old ones into the river? Are they items that were washed out of houses during floods? I would love to have the answers to these impossible questions. The oil tank on the left is not the first one I have seen on the Delaware. Not something that I can take out and it will probably end up somewhere down river after the next large flood. 

Carrying all of this up a muddy bank with Penny on a leash was not the easiest thing. Made it though and this brought my total for the day to around four bags. Two of recyclables and two of garbage. There were a lot of small items packed into that styrofoam container. 

I made the mistake of glancing up river before getting back in the car and I saw a few more items. Picked and packed them up and I went to dispose of the true garbage. 

When I stopped to deposit the non-recyclables in the trash cans I noticed another bag. I could see it from the trash cans, there is no reason it should have been there. 

On the way out to the main road I stopped multiple times to pick items up. I was exhausted by this point, but I really wanted to leave this access as clean as I possibly could.

 

I know I missed things, but I got as much as possible from along the roadway. I was happy with what I collected today and I well surpassed my goal of two garbage bags full. 

A long post for a long day. The two photos above are from the first stop today. I put them at the end since they weren't from the recreation area. This was the same gamelands I stopped at on Sunday and I did so on this trip for the same reason. Penny needed a break and this time we did a short hike down the access road. That's all for this post, will be back at it again tomorrow.

You too can help with taking out the trash! If you get out hiking take a grocery bag with you, give it a second use and fill it with trash while you are out! Every bit helps. You can also help contributing to this project here: Help Fund Taking Out the Trash

Like this blog? Like it on Facebook: Taking Out the Trash in Eastern PA