PA Environment Digest

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful and the DEP Coastal Resource Management Program have teamed up with local nonprofit organizations and local volunteers to remove 15,800 pounds of trash and debris, 1,000 pounds of recyclables, 1,000 pounds of scrap metal and 80 tires from the Delaware Estuary from January through May.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful and The Friends of the Cynwyd Heritage Trail organized a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service cleanup on January 17, along the Schuylkill River at The Cynwyd Heritage Trail.

Two hundred and thirty volunteers braved temperatures in the teens to prepare the area for the trail. The volunteers removed 8,000 pounds of trash and recycled 1,000 pounds of scrap metal. The trail is a proposed two-mile urban linear park that is being converted from the old SEPTA R6 line.

The trail, when completed, will wind through quaint residential areas and traverse between two large historic cemeteries along the Schuylkill River and eventually cross over the Schuylkill into the Manayunk section of Philadelphia.

Phase I of construction on the trail started this spring and each day the trail site is changing, looking better and better. Friends of the Cynwyd Heritage trail are planning for a September 30th ribbon cutting date.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, Greenbelt Overhaul Alliance of Levittown, and Silver Lake Nature Center organized Great American Cleanup of PA cleanups on April 30th and May 1st on Magnolia Lake and Silver Lake in the Silver Lake County Park.

The 460 acre park encompasses 4.5 miles of hiking trails that wander leisurely through Pennsylvania’s best example of a Coastal Plain Forest. The cleanup removed 7,800 pounds of trash and 1,000 pounds of recyclables from this unique coastal ecosystem. Silver Lake County Park and the Silver Lake Nature Center are natural treasures in Bristol Township section of lower Bucks County.

“Working with Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful for our Earth Day Work Days event was a great pleasure. Our partnership was a huge success because of the hard work of Michelle Dunn and because of the generosity of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. We produced amazing results for the cleanup of our local waterways and the preservation of our natural habitat. Thank you!” said Jennifer Bilger, coordinator of volunteers, Silver Lake Nature Center.

Through their partnership with the DEP Coastal Zone Resource Program, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has been working throughout the Delaware Estuary with community volunteers and with the help of local businesses removing 426,000 pounds of trash, 20,000 pounds of scrap metal and more than 280 tires from the estuary.

This has been accomplished by over 850 volunteers who put in over 3,800 hundred volunteer hours to improve the estuary for the residents, visitors, and the wildlife of the region.

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