The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Black River Clean-Up combs waterfront
Cart to be removed from Cromwell Park
Garbage bags filled up as Lorain’s shoreline and woods were cleansed in the first day of the annual Black River Clean-Up.
Participants numbered into the hundreds and the garbage tonnage soared early May 5.
Exact tallies were not immediately available, but the event organizers will post their numbers once the two-day event ends and they tally final amounts.
The goal: 13 tons of litter and junk picked up and transferred from Lorain’s waterfront to landfills, scrap yards or recycling centers.
“That would get us to the 100 ton mark for six years,” said event co-founder Stephanee Moore Koscho. “We’re hoping to hit the 100 ton mark.”
The event started at 9 a.m. and within an hour a crowd swarmed Lorain’s Lakeside Landing, the area around the Jackalope Lakeside restaurant and the East Pier, also known as the Mile Long Pier.
The group included many of the Lorain International Festival princesses, clad in matching blue shirts and armed with garbage bags and grabbers to pick up the litter. For many, it was their first time at the Black River Clean-Up, which is becoming a spring tradition in Lorain.
Mahala Papista, 19, of Lorain, is representing the Hungarian nationality. An east side native, it was her first clean-up, but far from her first visit to Lakeside Landing.
“This is my first time and I’m so happy we’re doing it here,” she said. “This is my favorite place. I grew up here.”
“It feels good to give back to the community,” said International Princess Ala’jeiah Milton, 16, of Elyria.
International Queen Madison Maniaci, 18, of Lorain, finished her classes at Magnificat High School on May 4 and the next morning came out to clean with her father, Ben.
“We loved it so much we had to come back,” Madison said. “It was a good time. And of course my dad’s going to find literally everything.”
“Mad, want a ball?” Ben Maniaci said as he tossed a discarded tennis ball toward his daughter.
“It went back in the water. He’s littering again,” she quipped as it rolled over the sand to Lake Erie.
The “finds” included golf balls, at least one bicycle reflector, the remains of an orange traffic barrel, some type of ladder made of plastic-covered wood and more.
Avon High School junior Michael Lavelle came to the event with members of the SAVE environmental club. He picked up a pair of plastic sunglass frames and held them up before his face to look through.
“Ewww, gross,” said teacher and club adviser Alex Kaldy.
“It’s so weird what we find,” said junior Madison McSweeney, making her second Black River CleanUp. “We found a little toy dinosaur sitting on a rock.”
This year, McSweeney said an English class essay assignment inspired her to rethink how she uses plastic bags and to try reducing used of them.
“I just really like helping out the community and helping out the earth,” McSweeney said.
This year’s haul could include the remaining parts of what appeared to be a stripped Mercury Grand Marquis found a few years ago in Cromwell Park.
New, the car had a curb weight of about two tons, according to online data for Ford Motor Co. autos. At Cromwell Park, the engine, interior, roof and three tires were gone, so what was left likely weighed less than that, but was still too heavy to be rolled out or carried out easily.
LoCo ‘Yaks were awaiting the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office to process the car before it gets scrapped. If sheriff’s deputies could track whoever dumped it, the culprit could be charged for the crime.
It was to be removed likely the morning of May 6, pulled out of the woods by pickup truck and trailer to a flatbed hauler.
“To get it to the flatbed stage is going to take some heavy equipment, some trailers, some ingenuity, a couple of guys scratching their heads saying, now what?” said event cofounder Robb Koscho. “Like everything we do in our clean-up, we’ll get it.”
It’s important to remove large items, he said, because when some people see them dumped somewhere, they may think dumping is allowable. Then Lorain takes two steps backward and no steps forward.
“We’re trying to take this area and make it something better for the community,” Koscho said.
“We loved it so much we had to come back.”
— Madison Maniaci, 18, of Lorain