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Sound Rivers staff met up with employees of the Cummins Rocky Mount Engine Plant last week for another cleanup of Cowlick Branch, a tributary of the Tar River.

“It was awesome,” said Sound Rivers Program Director Clay Barber. “We showed up at 9:30 and hit the creek. We had to bushwhack a bit of a path, and I was immediately impressed, or relieved, that it seems like a lot of the areas we picked up in the past are much cleaner.”

It was the fifth Sound Rivers/Cummins cleanups hosted over the past several years, as part of Cummins’ Water Works program. Over that time, the Cowlick Branch area has been a source of Tar River trash, according to Clay.

“The place adjacent to the creek has been a dumping ground for decades,” Clay said. “The creek was still full of glass and plastic and tire parts, and somebody found an old rusty saw handle, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it has been.”

The cleanup netted 200 pounds of trash this time around.

The excitement wasn’t all about trash, however. Clay, Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz, Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman and seven Cummins employees, including facilitator of the cleanup and Sound Rivers board member Miriam Espinoza, had a special guest.

“We found a copperhead snake, and it was obviously living and hunting in the path we were using, but it was not aggressive,” Clay said. “He did not seem very interested in us, so we posted a volunteer snake-watcher and that person kept an eye on the snake’s whereabouts, so we could steer clear of it.”

Clay said he’s appreciated the years of Cummins partnerships and enjoys cleanups with its rotating crew of volunteers.

“We love that Cummins is working in the community that their employees live in,” Clay said. “And it’s always funny to me that the employees on the cleanups usually don’t know each other. Most of the time they’re all in different departments, and it’s a massive plant, so they’re meeting each other for the first time out in the woods, cleaning up a creek.”

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