Stream cleanups are a great way for Trout Unlimited to engage with communities. Every year TU members and supporters connect on hundreds of rivers for events that make streams healthier and prettier.
Most of the events last a few hours and produce plenty of trash, from tires to plastic grocery bags to those ubiquitous single-use plastic drink bottles.
When TU staffer Jeff Kresch started thinking about planning an event in West Virginia, he thought big. And his ambitions found support from Jeff Yates, TU’s senior director of Volunteer Operations.
“Jeff and I were talking last year at the Eastern Rendezvous,” recalled Kresch, who mentioned that he wanted to plan a cleanup even in the headwaters of the Potomac River. “Jeff said, ‘How big do you think you could scale a cleanup?’”
Kresch thought about it.
“I’d never tried to go bigger than just one community in a weekend,” he said. “But then Jeff sent me some examples of big events. I thought, ‘I can probably do something like that.’”
Sweep the South Branch was born.
The South Branch of the North Fork of the Potomac River runs 133 miles through the rugged West Virginia Countryside. The watershed is a TU Priority Water and has been the center of extensive restoration and protection work over the past two decades.
The work spans the spectrum, including habitat restoration, barrier removal, and efforts to exclude livestock from streams. It has helped improve water quality, which makes an impact throughout the entire massive Potomac watershed, while also helping native brook trout that live in the systems headwaters on both private and National Forest lands.
Kresch chose four communities in the watershed — Franklin, Petersburg, Moorefield and Romney — to serve as hubs where volunteers could meet to gather supplies, instruction and inspiration. The work would stretch across three days, April 10-12.
Kresch wears two hats for TU. He’s a volunteer engagement association for the state of West Virginia as well as conservation crew member who gets his hands dirty with projects like installing livestock exclusion fencing to keep cattle out of streams.
He knew he’d need help planning and executing Sweep the South Branch, so he reached out to leaders of the P. Pendleton Kennedy, Mountaineer, Southern West Virginia and Blennerhasset TU chapters.
“Those chapters really helped me out with this thing,” Kresch said. “We had a great staff/chapter dynamic going on with everyone helping across the board.”
Each chapter headed the efforts in one of the four hub towns. A total of 40 volunteers came out over the three days.
Sponsorships helped boost the event. Big Timber Brewing in Elkins and Dry Run Spirits from Dahmer both helped out.
“They didn’t supply beverages,” Kresch said with a laugh. “It was a financial support.”
Subway provided lunches for all participants.
Over the course of the weekend, the volunteers collected 3,100 pounds of trash and 50 tires. They covered just under 7 road miles and nearly 19 miles of the river itself — not the full 133 miles, but an impressive figure for the inaugural event.
Kresch was happy with the outcome and is confident the event will grow.
“This is just the start,” he said. “We can keep building on this. Will there ever be a year when we can do the entire 133 miles in a weekend? I don’t know, but we’re going to try.”