WHAT LIES BENEATH
Team’s 15,000 hours of effort have turned up guns, old tires and more
Cleanup of the Cootes Paradise marsh system in Hamilton has yielded interesting scraps,
It has been six years since Alan Hansell left his solitary office as a writer, looking for the social environment that volunteerism can provide.
Enticed by an advertisement for a Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) lecture called “Recovery of Cootes,” he saw an opportunity.
Hansell ended his evening that night enjoying a beer with Tys Thyeijsmeijer, the RBG’s head of natural lands, and others, determined to become more involved.
When he walked the Cootes Paradise marsh system, the issue was obvious: lots of garbage.
So he approached Thyeijsmeijer again about forming a volunteer group to help the RBG.
In the fall of 2012, Hansell and a few volunteers from McMaster University pulled 51 shopping carts out of Ancaster Creek next to University Plaza. There were spots where you could walk across the creek without getting your feet wet because of all the carts, Hansell recalls.
His efforts felt like a resounding success when he later found a family tossing flower petals into the creek to honour Mahatma Gandhi, whose statue had just been unveiled in Hamilton.
That was six years and 355 cleanup days ago.
Since then, 2,000 volunteers of the Stewards of the Cootes Watershed and Red Hill Watershed have donated 15,757 hours of hard work and removed half a million pounds of garbage.
That has included three guns, false teeth, old Model T Ford tires, a bowling ball, an old typewriter, a leg cast and a drone.
Hansell, who is executive director, says he finds most environmental groups mandates are too broad to be very effective. “We deal with only visible litter and debris. We know it’s not perfect, but it helps and it gets more people engaged.”
Hansell emphasizes the volunteers work closely with the RBG, Hamilton Conservation Authority, the city and private land owners.
He says the first thing the stewards recognized is the environment needs more than a day’s attention.
“Our volunteers are people who don’t care how the garbage got there, who put it there or who is supposed to being cleaning it up,” he said. “They just look at it and say, ‘This is a mess. If we clean it up, it’s going to be better.’ ”
In summer, they put on hip waders and clean up creek beds, parts of the bank that aren’t accessible from land. They also collect all the feeder material on the flood plains and slopes so it never makes it to the creeks.
The stewards have learned Cootes Paradise is an important marsh ecosystem, including the creeks themselves, to the health and biodiversity of Hamilton’s natural lands. The same holds true — or more so — for the Red Hill Valley because there’s less green space to filter the contaminates that head into the water, Hansell says.
Once the group cleans up an area, a volunteer returns for 90 minutes a month to do “touchup work ... because garbage will attract garbage.”
“We are not just looking for a feel good clean up, we are looking for sustained results.”
Experts at the RBG have noticed a significant difference in the Cootes Paradise area since the stewards started pitching in. “We know we are having an effect,” Hansell said.
Given more time, people will start to notice similar results in the Red Hill watershed, he says.
“We look forward to the day we can say that both watersheds are clean and being kept clean.”