News

When Greenville’s Public Works department sounded the trash trap alarm, Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman, with the assistance of Sound Rivers Executive Director Heather Deck, headed over to Greensprings Park for an impromptu trash trap cleanout.

“We have a clean-out on the schedule for next Tuesday, but with all the heavy rains we’ve had lately, we needed to clear it out before the storms forecasted over the next few days,” Heather said.

The two shoveled out organic debris lodged both underneath and inside the passive litter-collection device, as well as gathered the trash that’s normally trapped inside.

“With the amount of trash and debris we pulled out of Greens Mill Run on Wednesday, there’s no doubt the trash trap is doing its job,” Katey said. “It was 61 pounds of trash and about a million pounds of sticks and other debris.”

They also took more precautions than usual, as nearly 32,000 gallons of sewage had spilled into a tributary of Greens Mill Run the previous week. The spill happened during replacement of a stormwater pipe at the Greenville’s Public Works complex, according to Greenville Utilities.

“It was pretty stinky out there, but it always is. We double-gloved, though, because the samples I took last week after the spill were 600-plus MPN,” Katey said.

The recreational water-quality standard for E. coli is 126 MPN.

The Greens Mill Run trash trap was installed in March and has since prevented nearly 300 pounds of garbage from floating downstream to the Tar River. The trap is the fifth installed on small, urban waterways throughout the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds—part of Sound Rivers’ Litter-Free Rivers program. Other traps are located on Jack’s Creek in Washington, Duffyfield Canal in New Bern, Little Rock Creek on the grounds of the Walnut Creek Wetland Center in Raleigh and Adkin Branch in Kinston. A sixth trash trap was recently approved by the Town of Tarboro, to be installed on East Tarboro Canal in the fall. Sound Rivers, in partnership with The Great Raleigh Cleanup and the City of Raleigh, is working toward the installation of two additional trash traps in Raleigh.

Greenville’s trash trap is sponsored by Grady-White Boats. Thank you, Grady-White!

Do you like Sound Rivers’ Litter-Free Rivers program? You can support it today!