Springfield river group earns national honor

The Black River Action Team has received national recognition for its grass-roots cleanup and education efforts.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20100626/NEWS02/706269989/1003/NEWS02       # # # # Springfield river group earns national honor  •  Rutland Herald  •  By JOSH O’GORMAN STAFF WRITER - Published: June 26, 2010  •  SPRINGFIELD - The Black River Action Team has received national recognition for its grass-roots cleanup and education efforts.  •  The group received a certificate of appreciation from the U.S. Department of the Interior for its work in furthering the department’s Take Pride in America program, which encourages local groups to clean up public lands.  •  The award comes on the 10th anniversary of the group’s formation by founder and director Kelly Stettner, who recalled being prompted into action during an evening stroll with her husband John Stettner and their daughter Moira along the Route 11 bridge where it crosses the Black River in Springfield.  •  “I always like to look over the side to look for turtles and birds and fish, and instead I saw tires and shopping carts,” Kelly Stettner said. “I said, ‘Somebody should do something about this,’ and John said, ‘Well, you’re somebody.’”  •  That first year, Stettner and small handful of volunteers pulled 14 shopping carts from the river. From there, the group – and its cleanup efforts – grew exponentially.  •  “That second year, we had a chain gang going on and we pulled 75 shopping carts out of the river,” she said.  •  Unfortunately, the proximity of a supermarket has led to the river becoming a popular dumping ground for shopping carts. During the last decade, BRAT volunteers – or BRATs as they like to be called – have retrieved 1,000 carts from the Black River, as well as dozens of tires, tons of household trash and larger items such as couches and television sets.  •  One of those volunteers is Marita Johnson, who began working with BRAT after retiring from Riverside Middle School where she taught seventh-grade biology.  •  In addition to cleanup efforts, BRAT members teach lessons in river ecology to groups such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts.  •  “It’s great to be able to continue what I had spent my whole life doing,” said Johnson, who has had former students come help with the annual cleanup. “It’s wonderful to see the young people and the families come out, because they are the future generation who will care for the watershed.”  •  The Black River flows into the Connecticut River, and BRAT’s efforts dovetail with those of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, which has performed a “source to sea” cleanup for the last 13 years.  •  “It’s great to have organizations that are active in the tributaries because the rivers are connected, so anything they pull out of the Black River won’t end up in the Connecticut River and ultimately the Long Island Sound,” said Andrea Donlon, river steward for the council.  •  BRAT will hold its annual river cleanup from 8 a.m. to noon Aug. 28. Volunteers will meet at either the Citizens Bank drive-up in Springfield or at the gazebo in Veteran’s Park in Ludlow.  •  Volunteers might find something as unusual as the case of wine recovered a few years ago from the Black River in Weathersfield.  •  “I need to get a bottle of that wine to celebrate our 10th birthday,” Stettner said.  •