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Sound Rivers’ partners joined Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz for a Kinston post-Tropical Storm Ophelia trash trap cleanout last week.

Brewers Matt Hart and Chris Baker from Mother Earth Brewing, Lenoir Community College’s Maria Messner and Lincoln City Rising member Lee Albritton donned waders and waded into an urban waterway remove trash captured by the device from the downstream flow of Adkin Branch.

“We were able to remove a bunch of tree limbs from the trap after the storm and removed 21.32 pounds of trash from the trap, in addition to the trash removed from the banks of the creek,” Emily said. “To have prominent community members out there cleaning out the trash trap, that was a nice thing to see.”

Mother Earth Foundation and Lincoln City Rising, along with the City of Kinston, have partnered with Sound Rivers for the creation, installation and maintenance of the Adkin Branch trash trap. Messner, a biology instructor at Lenoir Community College, is planning future field days for students to clean out the trap, Emily said.

While there, the team took the opportunity to reset the trash traps anchors on the banks, moving them slightly upstream to make sure the buoys floating the anchor lines lay flat on the water’s surface, ensuring no floating trash slides beneath and continues downstream to the Neuse River.