PROTECTING A ‘TREASURE’
Volunteers pitch in to clean up Candlewood Lake
CANDLEWOOD LAKE — Broken grills, crushed beer cans, empty wine bottles and discarded fireworks were among the litter volunteers collected at Candlewood Lake over the summer.
Carlos Bahia, of Brookfield, and Ron Hollister, of Danbury, decided to mount a cleanup effort last summer after reading negative Facebook comments about the trash littering Candlewood Lake’s islands. They were joined by other volunteers and now host regular cleanups.
“It’s really bringing out the best in some people,” Bahia said.
Volunteers collected seven to 10 contractor bags of garbage and a number of metal debris, including signs, grills and even a smoker.
Bahia, Hollister and Mark Rasmussen use Facebook to help get the word out. They completed four cleanups last year and another four this year, averaging a dozen or so people each time. The two latest events drew about 20 volunteers, including the Dahls — a family of divers from New Fairfield, who collected two bags of bottles, cans and garbage.
“It was unreal the amount of stuff they pulled out of the bottom of the lake,” Bahia said.
Volunteers spend a few hours cleaning up, then turn the day into a chance to socialize — granted from a distance this year due to the coronavirus.
“When Carlos and I started
doing it, we knew we could do it by ourselves a couple hours at a time, but we knew if we built a relationship with businesses and organizations we would build this into a meaningful solution,” Hollister said.
A key partnership has been Echo Bay Marina, which was the first to work with the volunteers. The marina is a meeting point, and provides some boats and lets volunteers use its dumpster.
“Echo Bay Marina has been a tremendous help,” Bahia said. “Without them, it would have been tremendously hard to do.”
FirstLight Power Resources, which owns and operates the lake, provides garbage bags, trash collectors and other help.
Len Greene, FirstLight’s spokesman, said the company wanted to help because it’s committed to protecting the islands as natural open space to benefit the wildlife and homeowners around the lake.
“We recognize that it's unrealistic to expect the police and the Candlewood Lake Authority can entirely prevent boaters and others from visiting the islands, and we regret that some of these visitors are leaving trash behind,” he said. “We're grateful to everyone who has volunteered to step up and clean trash from these islands and protect them as open space, and FirstLight has been honored to provide support for the cleanup efforts.”
Hollister and Bahia said the cleanups have brought people together. Residents from the five lake towns attend and members from the Candlewood Lake Authority have started to participate.
Candlewood Lake Authority usually holds an annual cleanup in May, but canceled it this year due to the coronavirus. Executive Director Mark Howarth said they look forward to working with the volunteers and FirstLight on future cleanups.
“It is always important to have the users of the lake be involved in keeping our lake clean and we applaud the work of the volunteers that have been organizing these clean ups and support their efforts,” Howarth said.
Bahia and Hollister said they’re seeing parents bring their children along to help and use it as a teaching moment.
Having younger volunteers has been great, Hollister said, because one of the main reasons for doing it is to preserve the lake as a natural resource for future generations.
“The lake is definitely a treasure in this area,” he said, adding they don’t want to have the islands closed.
It’s serving as an educational tool for people in general by encouraging boaters to think about how they’ll properly dispose of their garbage while on the water. They’ve seen significantly less trash as the season and cleanups have gone on. Other boaters and lake residents have also reached out about how clean the islands are.
“We showed by example,” Bahia said. “Our goal is to educate people on cleaning up and not leaving your garbage behind.”
FirstLight has a similar goal. “We'd remind people visiting Candlewood Lake that the islands have been set aside as natural open space, we'd urge you to respect them as such — and if you do pay a respectful visit, please do not leave trash behind and if you do see trash, do the right thing and pick it up,” Greene said.
Bahia and Hollister might have one more cleanup at Candlewood Lake, but residents still have a chance to help other shorelines in the state.
Save the Sound and Subaru of New England are offering 19 in-person cleanups this weekend and next. Stamford’s Holly Pond cleanup is set for Oct. 25 and the date for Milford’s Bayview Crescent is to be determined. There is also a virtual cleanup option for people to clean in their own communities and log their data on Ocean Conservancy’s mobile app, Clean Swell.
A cleanup will be at Lake Kenosia Park in Danbury from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
People can sign up online for the cleanup they want to attend through Save the Sound’s website.
The cleanups are usually centered around International Coastal Cleanup Day. That day of action is now a month of action to spread out the events due to the coronavirus concerns around large gatherings. Last year’s Connecticut events had more than 2,500 volunteers who collected more than three tons of plastics and other trash along local waterways and the Long Island Sound.
This year, all volunteers must bring and wear face masks to participate and are encouraged to form groups only with people they’re quarantining with. The size of cleanups will be limited according to the state health guidelines on social gatherings.