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Consistent, heavy rains over the past two weeks have led Sound Rivers to put a new term to use: emergency trash-trap cleanout.

“All the stormwater runoff is putting not only the usual trash in our traps, but also organic debris — leaves and branches — which is filling them up pretty quickly,” said Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman.  

Katey visited the “Trashy Friends” team as they were cleaning on the trash trap on Jack’s Creek in Washington this week.

“They pulled out 56 pounds of trash, and were amazing, as always,” she said.

Sound Rivers board member Betsy Hester and longtime volunteers Christina Marshen, Dawn Dolson and Cathy Bell, along with Dawn’s son, Jesse, waded through mucky waters to remove the trash and do some repair, adding more buoys to the passive litter-collection device’s anchor lines to prevent trash from sneaking under the lines and heading downstream to the Pamlico River.

The Jack’s Creek, Greenville and Raleigh trash traps have each received emergency trash-trap cleanouts over the past week. Another cleanout, scheduled for Tuesday in Greenville, was postponed due high water in Greens Mill Run, a Tar River tributary.

Sound Rivers’ trash traps are an integral part of its Litter-Free Rivers program — corralling trash floating downstream in small, urban tributaries in Washington, New Bern, Raleigh, Kinston and Greenville. A sixth trash trap was recently approved by the Town of Tarboro, with installation scheduled for the fall. Sound Rivers, the City of Raleigh, North Carolina State University and The Great Raleigh Cleanup are also partnering to install another three trash traps in the Marsh Creek watershed in Raleigh.

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