Polluters’ plans to help improve the quality of life of organisms in the Red Cedar River by donating items such as broken bicycles and a television set were spoiled Sunday afternoon.
These objects and other garbage were pulled from the river in a cleanup effort sponsored by the Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment.
More than 40 volunteers from various campus groups went down to the river in waders and canoes to help clean the water that flows through MSU’s campus.
“This project was independent of the E. coli problem in the river,” said Christina Carra, the RISE adviser. “We started planning this in August, and I requested a grant from the (Department of Environmental Quality) to help fund it.”
The money helped pay for items like the waders some students wore when going into the river.
Jesse Gabbard, president of the MSU Fisheries and Wildlife Club, was one of these students.
“It is really crazy the amount of stuff that keeps popping up (in the Red Cedar River),” he said.
Gabbard, an animal science senior, has done similar Red Cedar River cleanup efforts in previous years.
“People don’t seem to care too much,” he said. “When we do the same thing again (at a later date) we are going to find the same amount of stuff, and maybe even more.”
One aspect the group is investigating is when much of the pollution is occurring.
“I know that you can get a ticket for destruction of property if police catch you, and you would think that would stop students,” Gabbard said.
But that doesn’t seem to deter some people from continuing to pollute the river, he said.
“I think that the pollution is an education problem,” Carra said. “Either students don’t know where to put (their garbage) or they think that putting it by the river is an OK place.”
The so-called “garbage” that volunteers found Sunday included more than six bicycles, one that one student gave a test drive.
“This bike is actually rideable,” said Karla Clark, a fisheries and wildlife sophomore. “It is pretty pitiful that someone threw a bike in the river rather than finding it a home.”
The objects found in the river will be on display in front of the rock on Farm Laneon Oct. 25 for the MSU community to see.
“A lot of students don’t know what their peers are putting into the river and this will show them,” said Amy Wren, an environmental biology junior. “Students who don’t do it themselves don’t realize that others are (throwing garbage into the river).”
Carra said the entire campus is not to blame.
“This is not a major problem with the majority of the student body,” she said, “rather a small percentage of the mainstream.”
With the pollutants being unloaded from trucks and canoes, many passers-by took notice of the unusual objects the river was housing.
“We hope that when people see what we are pulling out, they think to themselves, ‘Why aren’t people throwing it away?’” said Andrea Feldpausch, an environmental biology and zoology junior.
Feldpausch said student involvement to clean up the river is improving.
“I helped clean up in the spring, and there were not many people here to help,” she said, “And now it seems (by the large response) we are making people aware.”
