For the first year, MSU students will partner with Lansing and East Lansing to create awareness about river pollution.

The eighth annual Adopt a River Program will take place on April 21 - the day before Earth Day.

The program has community members following a river trail along Grand and Red Cedar rivers picking up trash, while flat-bottomed boats pull debris out of the two rivers.

“We pull out couches, shopping carts, bikes, a swing set,” said Jennifer Rostar, program director for the Mid-Michigan Environmental Action Council. “It is amazing that people use the river as their dumping ground.”

This year the program will expand the clean-up onto campus with the help of MSU students and staff.

Each volunteer is given trash bags, safety gear and assigned a spot along one of the rivers. They spend the morning picking up trash and beautifying the river trail, Rostar said.

Last year’s program had 600 volunteers, and Rostar hopes to have 800 volunteers this year, not including campus helpers.

Bob Wilson, a resource development professor, is making the program a mandatory assignment for his public policy process in Michigan class.

Wilson said he used to run the river trail and helped put the program together to clean the trail up with the help of other community members in the early 1990s.

He also said it is important for his class to get out and practice what he has been teaching.

“This is a great opportunity for my class to impact the community,” he said. “We need to focus to really get the students out there and value and protect our natural resources.”

Wilson said of the 55 students in his class about 90 percent of them will be cleaning the river trail on April 21. And those who can’t make it will being doing work before to get more students involved.

Kristy Koller, a resource development sophomore, is one of Wilson’s students who is very excited about the opportunity to clean the trail.

Koller is working with the Mid-Michigan Environmental Council as a campus coordinator to involve more MSU students.

“I am very interested in getting our campus involved in environmental issues,” she said. “It’s going to be a really nice thing and a good way for students to get involved in the community.”

Those interested in volunteering can register at 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on April 21 under the Shiawasse Street bridge in Lansing. For information, call 485-9001.