Arnold Stream Team 211’s annual August cleanup event will be less formal and focus on smaller waterways this year.
The group will begin registering people for the cleanup at 8 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 27, at the Kiwanis Pavilion in Arnold City Park, on Bradley Beach Road off Jeffco Boulevard near the Meramec River.
A light breakfast will be served at the pavilion, said Brian Waldrop, who co-chairs the Stream Team with Bernie Arnold.
After registration, volunteers will receive gloves, a bag and a map of smaller creeks throughout the city to target for trash cleanup. Waldrop said volunteers also can choose to clean up a creek that is not suggested, as long as they are not trespassing.
“We are having more trouble finding trash than in years past, which is a good thing,” Waldrop said. “There are areas that have not been touched or overlooked over the last 30 years. We have all of these little tributaries throughout Arnold. The volunteers will collect the trash and bring the bags back to the park.”
Arnold Stream Team 211 started working to clean waterways in the city in 1991. The group typically holds events on the first Saturday in March and final Saturday in August.
Efforts have traditionally focused on cleaning up areas around the park and other more well-known tributaries in Arnold.
“Since a lot of the people who do attend the Arnold cleanup are from Arnold, they know of areas closer to their homes that need to be cleaned up,” Waldrop said. “I would like to see volunteers go to the Strawberry Creek Nature Area and go to the creek and walk that creek. There is a creek next to (the Fox school campus) that has litter in it. There is Black Creek behind Home Depot and Target (off Vogel Road).
“To send 30 to 40 people to these creeks is not worth it, but sending two or five people to these creeks is well worth it.”
Waldrop said volunteers will be asked to return to the Kiwanis Pavilion with their trash bags no later than noon on Saturday.
“They can also just collect trash for an hour and bring a bag back by 10 a.m. It will be very informal,” he said. “I hope to get 50 to 75 people. That would be wonderful.”
When the group held a cleanup effort on March 5, the members and volunteers removed 28 passenger-vehicle tires, four tractor-trailer tires and about 20 cubic yards of trash from Arnold City Park, Jeffco Boulevard near the Meramec River, the Flamm City River Access, alongside Arnold Tenbrook and Haag roads, Ferd B. Lang Park and the Ozark Drive Paw Park, Waldrop said.
He said the Arnold Stream Team will organize another cleanup effort March 4, 2023, in the city. For more information about the group, go the Arnold Stream Team 211 Facebook page or mostreamteam.org.