Bottles, beer cans and trash litter the landscape along the Pollet River in Elgin, New Brunswick.
Environmentalists will spend the next week cleaning up 5000 pounds of garbage left behind following last weekend’s Pollet River Run.
“Usually it takes and entire week to go up and down the river and locate the rafts and take them out afterwards” said Andrew Downey with the Petitcodiac Watershed Alliance.
Downey is one of many Alliance members who were helping with the clean up Tuesday, along with members of Fort Folly Habitat Recovery.
The mounds of trash left behind is endangering fish and animals that depend on the river for their survival says Theresa Johnston, another concerned citizen helping with the clean up.
She says party-goers just don’t realize that the rings holding together a six-pack of beer can be dangerous if left behind.
“Wildlife and fish and birds can get tangled in it and that can be fatal for them,” Johnston said.
Ironically, the Pollet River Run was started 30 years ago as a campaign to clean up the river. Now, party-goers are leaving it in dire straits.
Local resident Duane Price says he has been trying to clean up the river banks following the Pollet River Run for more than 30 years and every year he’s disgusted by what he sees.
“It’s always been a problem and it hasn’t gotten any better,” Price said.
He says the Pollet River Run is like a right of spring passage in Albert County, with hundreds of people gathering along the river near Elgin and then float down in small, usually homemade rafts.
Price says and while the RCMP do crack down on impaired drivers, some people believe party-goers should be fined for littering the environment too.
“I think people get a couple of drinks and the forget to care maybe,” Price said.
It’s not just trash that’s left behind, Downey says entire rafts are left abandoned on the riverbanks long after the party’s over.
Cleaning up the debris he says is backbreaking work but someone has to take responsibility to keep the river clean. The Pollet River is important habitat for trout and the endangered Atlantic salmon.
“We are seeing a culture shift here on the site. There was a time when people would not even use garbage cans when we get them up, but recently we’ve actually seen people using them right away,” Downey said.
But given the piles of trash collected at the site again this year, there’s still a long way to go.
Downey will not go as far as to say the party needs to end — the run is a tradition — he just wishes everyone would clean up after themselves.
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