Sustainability Gitter Done: Finding solutions to keep our waterways clean

Trash can be a galvanizing topic for most people, especially river and nature lovers. We are disgusted at the sight of the plastic bottles and bags, single-use products, Styrofoam, and balls of every sort that float in the water— moving from one riverbank to another on voyages downstream or sinking to the river bottom.

Most of the debris in the Chattahoochee River arrives via tributaries that serve as natural conduits from the storm drains that collect rainwater and trash from streets, parking lots, yards and commercial and industrial sites. Some trash is thrown directly into the river, usually off bridges: the out of sight, out of mind attitude that has historically been the way people have dealt with something they didn’t want—whether it be old furniture, appliances, tires (so many tires…), mattresses, toys, clothes, or even dead animals.

During Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s (CRK) first twenty-five years, the organization removed at least two million pounds of trash and tires from the Chattahoochee, its tributaries and lakes with the help of thousands of volunteers— enough debris to fill twenty-five, eighteen-wheel tractor trailer trucks.

One of the strangest trashrelated phone calls I ever received, when I was at CRK, came from an employee at a power plant on the Chattahoochee. She asked, matter-of-factly, if we would please remove a rotting goat from the river. It had apparently gotten “stuck” in an eddy in front of the plant’s water intake grate. Plant workers refused to make repairs to the intake until it, and the nauseating smell emanating from the carcass, were gone. I quickly declined, responding that our organization did not handle such waste and suggested that she speak with local animal control agencies.

In the years since I have retired, more goats—several hundred and all headless—have been found by CRK in the same general vicinity of the Chattahoochee: the apparent result of religious rituals that involve animal sacrifice. Remnants from these legal