Rescue the river rally seeks funds
With 81 cars, 10,000 tires and 200 tons of trash already fished out of the Merrimack River, advocates are demanding that cities and towns along the beleaguered waterway do more.
The river’s Water Keepers Coalition is holding a petition drive today in Haverhill in an attempt to convince municipal leaders to pay for more cleanup.
The Merrimack, advocates point out, remains a drinking water source for about 600,000 people.
“Mayors and town managers are hitting the public for water bills but not making the system any better to keep the river clean,” said Rocky Morrison, president of the Methuen-based Clean River Project.
Today’s petition drive — from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. across from the Haverhill Public Library — seeks to compel officials in 15 Merrimack Valley communities to back a plan to rescue the river.
It comes a month after mayors and town managers shut down a plan with a $370,000-plus price tag to clear the Merrimack and riverbanks of discarded hypodermic needles.
As previously reported in the Herald, 15 towns that border the river invited bids from outside contractors to clean up the thousands of sharps that litter the river’s water and beaches. The Clean River Project was one of just two responders, but local community leaders say the organization’s proposal was a poor fit.
Morrison’s nonprofit made the lone bid. Now he’s trying to draft local support to keep the proposal alive.
“We’ve got this river turned around, but we still need to deal with floatable trash,” he told the Herald yesterday. “If we had the proper equipment, like booms, it would help turn the ecosystem around and kids would not be stepping on needles.”
Karen Sawyer Conard, executive director of the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission, has said Morrison’s $376,500 proposal to clean up the sharps was too expensive.
The communities named in the bid included Amesbury, Andover, Chelmsford, Dracut, Groveland, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, Methuen, Merrimac, Newburyport, Salisbury, Tewksbury, Tyngsboro and West Newbury.
Morrison said yesterday his group has been working for 14 years to win back the river. He said they’ve pulled out 81 cars, 10,000 tires and 200 tons of trash — all as cities and towns dump “100 million gallons” of untreated stormwater into the river annually.
He also said homeless camps along the banks, where tossed needles are sometimes found, just add to the problem.
“The denying mayors and managers put out a fake contract and walked away,” he said of the cleanup project. “I opted to do a rally instead of giving up.”