Have Mercy on Percy

Team Green has had two great clean up this month! The first was the Nashville Clean Water Project: Percy Priest Clean-up on September 13th and the second was the Buffalo Canoe Float in Waynesboro, TN. The Nashville Clean Water Project is a group of representatives from various organizations including Cumberland River Compact, Metro Water, Team Green, Nashville Hiking Meetup, Army Corp of Engineers, the Mayors Office and Think Media. Our goal is to increase awareness of the problem facing Percy Priest Lake and create drastic preventative changes in order to preserve the integrity of Percy Priest and other local waterways. This clean up was the second this year. The first was the largest clean up in Nashville History, and still the shoreline and islands of Percy Priest lake are littered with tires, beer cans, and careless trash. The issue: people boat out to the islands, party, and leave everything there for the island fairies to carry away. This clean up was much smaller, but we used it to get the support from Nashville, Smyrna, LaVergne, and Rutherford County officials. With only 130 volunteers we cleared nearly 350 bags of trash, 40 tires, and numerous large metal items. We will have a significantly larger clean up in the spring, and the mayors have promised to hold a Summit this fall.

The second clean up was at Buffalo River. We launched from Crazy Horse Recreational Park and float down a 10 mile stretch of the river. Team Green had ten canoes, one kayak, and the support of everyone floating with us that day. The twenty one of us cleaned over 15 tires, a hot water heater, grills, Styrofoam coolers, and countless beer bottles and missing flip flops. Many of our canoes were so weighed down by the tires that we were unable to continue cleaning efforts for the last 3 miles of the river, which had more beer cans on the bottom of the current than I could count. Next year I plan to make an over night camping trip of it with a lunch break after five miles. This way we won't be in such a hurry to make it back to land before dark!