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Community Corner

Volunteers Clean up Bowie's Streams

Old tires, shopping carts are often dumped in the city's streams.

Some 300 volunteers hauled oversized bags full of trash out of Bowie streams Saturday morning during the city’s spring stream clean-up.

Scout troops and community groups hit eight different locations to clean up the city's streams which flow into the Patuxent River and eventually empty into the Chesapeake Bay.

The clean-ups are held twice a year—in the spring and fall—to improve the overall health of the Patuxent River and its tributaries.

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Last April, 242 volunteers removed 8,950 pounds of trash and recyclables from Bowie streams.

City Watershed Manager Tiffany Wright said many people do not realize that what ends up in the road often finds it way into our waterways. Runoff in the city's newer developments is diverted into stormwater management ponds, which collect the runoff and debris before it reaches the streams.  But in about two-thirds of the city—the older, Levitt sections—the storm drains flow directly into the streams untreated, she said. 

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"It's an important concept for people to realize," Wright said.

Too often, larger unwanted items are intentionally dumped in and around the streams.

“They’ve found toilets, shopping carts, and tires, such random stuff,” Wright said.

A lawnmower leaking gas and oil was found in a Bowie stream, according to Wright.  

While bottles and plastic bags are the most commonly found items, more than 300 tires have been removed from the streams, Wright said. Sixty tires were collected last April alone, Wright said. Too many people do not properly dispose of them, she said.

The City of Bowie will accept up to four automobile tires a year, but residents must call for a special pick-up, according to the city’s website.

City public works assistant engineer Alan Forney, who helped coordinate Saturday’s event, said the early numbers indicate that Saturday’s clean-up may have been the city’s most well-attended to date. He said volunteers in the past have found such things as a car transmission, utility piping and a wheelbarrow.

Third grader Emma Arroyo, who combed the stream near Meadowbrook Park for litter with her brownie troop, described the clean-up as an “awesome adventure.”

Arroyo said it was important to protect the environment.

“Our planet needs to be healthy. If our planet isn’t healthy, we won’t be healthy,” she said.

The most interesting thing she found? A pizza box, she said.

 Erin Farney, 8, said removing trash from streams helps the planet.

“It's important to do this so that nature can live and the streams don’t get too polluted,” she said.

The next stream clean-up will be held in October. Wright said the city needs volunteers to help lead the clean-up. Visit the city’s Stream Teams page or call 301-809-3043 for more information.

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