Updated 11/6/2009 10:18:21 PM
For one of the few times since the summer, we will have a complete weekend without rain.
The benefits are not only psychological...but practical as well.
Residents in communities downstream from the fall floods will be able to get out and cleanup.
There's plenty of work to do and not enough people to do it.
To paraphrase a familiar phrase---trash flows downstream.
"It needs it bad" said board chairman of Rivers Alive Bonny Putney. "Everything from Atlanta down, got washed into West Point Lake. And there are huge, huge rafts of trash."
That's why there is a huge cleanup tomorrow at West Point Lake. Some five hundred people are expected to take part.
"The need is so great" said Bonny Putney. "You can go to just about any waterway and you can find a lot of trash."
Late summer and early fall has traditionally been the time in metro Atlanta for river and lake cleanups.
But this year, that effort has been hit with a double whammy.
First there was the hit the waterways took from the rains.
"All the accumulated trash from all the years of the drought is now washing down into the waterways" Bonny Putney said. "So we have a greater need."
And then there's the hit the cleanups took.
"It's not from people not wanting to do it" Putney said, "or cleanups that have not been scheduled. It's the fact that the weather's been bad and people haven't been able to do it."
Cleanups organized by "Rivers Alive" and "Conserve Georgia" usually have thirty thousand people volunteering.
So far this year they've gotten seven thousand.
Now that the weather has turned nice, there's an opportunity to get a lot of work done. This pile of trash was collected in one day here at Lake Lanier...yesterday.
In addition to the cleanup at West Point Lake, there's a cleanup in Austell this weekend.
Because even though trash flows downstream...when the sun comes out so does community pride.
For information about scheduled cleanups...or how to organize a cleanup of your own:
