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Glen Ellyn Park District volunteers join effort to clean river, despite rain: 2017

Posted on: May 21, 2017

Volunteers bent on cleaning up the DuPage River were not dissuaded last Saturday, May 20, by threatening skies.

Instead, the environmentally aware groups did as much as they could before lightning storms cut short the annual countywide effort known as the DuPage County River Sweep.

The annual event was started in 1991 by The Conservation Foundation, a Naperville nonprofit organization.

A local group, coordinated by the Glen Ellyn Park District, tackled a one-mile section of the river’s east branch that runs through the Churchill Woods Forest Preserve in Lombard.

“We got about 40 people,” said Renae Frigo, a naturalist with the Glen Ellyn Park District. “We worked for an hour before it started lightning and we had to stop for safety reasons. I’m glad we went ahead with it and got a little bit of work done.”

Frigo said the group included Cub Scouts, a church group and several individuals from the community.

“We just spread out and conquered as much as we could. We knew storms were coming,” Frigo said.

Frigo said debris was removed from the river and from tree branches overhanging the river.

“It’s always interesting what you’re going to pull out of the river,” she said.

In the past, she said, items as disparate as a safe and a toboggan sled were removed, but this year the river yielded more mundane items, such as a couple of golf clubs and one baseball bat.

Canoeists who usually help on the river were sidelined, said Jan Roehll, the Conservation Foundation’s DuPage County program director.

Roehll said about half of the groups signed up to participate Saturday decided to defer their portion of the clean-up.

“A lot of the groups didn’t get the opportunity to go out. Some actually went on Sunday instead. Some went out with fewer numbers,” she said.

Overall, Roehll said, about 700 people in 32 groups signed up for the 2017 DuPage County River Sweep.

“Those that didn’t go out will make it up a different weekend,” she said, adding that some groups plan to reschedule to Saturday, June 3.

Last year’s effort to clean up both the east and west branches of the DuPage River and Salt Creek resulted in the removal of nine tons of trash, she said.

The DuPage County River Sweep is assisted by a number of companies and agencies, Roehll said, including Waste Management and Nestle. American Rivers, an environmental group, donates trash bags and funds are contributed by the DuPage County Stormwater Management department. The effort is also partially grant-funded by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, she said.