DuPage River Sweep aims to clean waterways with volunteer help

Sue George's idea of spring cleaning is probably a little different from yours and mine.

We think about clearing out some space in the garage or maybe lugging a couple things out of the basement.

She thinks about getting 600 volunteers together at more than 20 locations in DuPage County to spend three hours on a Saturday morning pulling all sorts of junk out of the DuPage River and its tributaries.

And, oh yeah, perhaps helping restore some natural areas by removing invasive plants such as pesky buckthorn and garlic mustard that threaten the native flora.

George, who serves as a watershed assistant at the Naperville-based DuPage Conservation Foundation, is one of the organizers of this year's DuPage River Sweep that runs 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 21.

If the sweep sounds familiar, it should. This is its 20th anniversary, and since it began in 1991 more than 7,560 volunteers have removed nearly 200 tons of garbage from DuPage waterways.

Even with all that, George says there's plenty of work still to be done — and she'd like your help.

“It's a chance to get some vitamin D and do something wonderful for your community,” she says. “You're in and done in three hours, and you can feel good about it.”

Seven tons

You'd think after 20 years there wouldn't be much trash left in the DuPage River. And, truth be told, the amount of junk being hauled away as a result of the River Sweep has declined over the years, even as the area that volunteers are covering has grown larger.

In the early years, it wasn't unusual for workers to collect as much as 11 tons of debris from area waterways. Now, George says, that number has dropped to about 7 tons “and it seems like that's become a fairly consistent number.”

Part of the decline probably can be traced to a greater public awareness of our environment. Part of it probably can be traced to the fact that persistent cleaning keeps junk from piling up.

Last year, a record 570 volunteers patrolled almost 40 miles of shoreline and, working both in the water and along the banks, came up with a list of stuff that would make those two guys on “American Pickers” proud.

George says crews removed about 30 tires, an engine cylinder head, mattresses and even a car fender, along with the usual assortment of plastic bags and bottles, gum wrappers and items of clothing.

So how exactly does a mattress make its way from somebody's bedroom to the DuPage River?

Nobody can be sure, but George speculates someone may have placed it under a bridge as a hangout and then watched it wash away when the river rose.

Saturday's cleanup will go along both branches of the DuPage River, Salt Creek and numerous tributaries. Volunteers can work independently, but most operate in conjunction with community liaisons who team them with other folks and, with the Conservation Foundation's help, provide them with trash bags, gloves, garbage pokers and even water and granola bars to keep them going.

The vast majority of cleanup sites are in DuPage County, but the project also is expanding to other areas such as Plainfield.

In addition to the foundation, the program gets support from the DuPage County Stormwater Management Division, the DuPage Forest Preserve District and even the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Father of the sweep

The father of the DuPage River Sweep is Warrenville's Jim Kleinwachter, who now serves as the Conservation Foundation's land protection specialist.

But back in the late 1980s, Kleinwachter was just a guy who was more than a little frustrated with all the trash he found in and around the DuPage River.

He frequently called the city to complain, but officials told him they could do little about it because the river fell under the auspices of the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Then one day he read a story about how IDOT was turning over responsibility for the river to the municipalities. Unfortunately, Warrenville officials told him, the city didn't have enough money to tackle a serious cleanup project.

“OK, you can't do this,” Kleinwachter told then-mayor Vivian Lund, “it's a junk pile down there.”

And Lund told Kleinwachter: You're just the person to spearhead a volunteer effort to make it right.

And so he did.

The first year about 25 people came out to help, and the second year it was bigger and better. Then Kleinwachter got a call from Conservation Foundation officials suggesting the pollution problem went far beyond just Warrenville and offering to help. The River Sweep was born.

“Nobody seemed to care in the early years,” Kleinwachter says now, “so it's rewarding to see more people getting involved. I realized early on that you can't do this alone.”

He says volunteers have put a serious dent in the junk that winds up in the river, and in those areas that crews visit every spring the amount of garbage is down noticeably.

“In the areas we've done for years we've pretty much put ourselves out of work,” he says.

Shifting directions

In areas where volunteers have gotten ahead of those who dump junk in the river, sweep organizers have turned their attention to other projects, primarily involving restoration of river banks and nearby forests.

That will be true again on Saturday in places such as Blackwell Forest Preserve near Warrenville, Hitchcock Woods in Lisle, Springbrook Nature Center in Itasca and Hidden Lake Forest Preserve near Downers Grove.

Anyone looking for a template for such a project need look no further than Lisle, where about a dozen volunteers last year dazzled everybody by restoring about four acres of Hitchcock Woods in a single day.

The man behind that project was Al Zubenko, who began volunteering as part of the sweep 18 years ago and never stopped.

Over the past few years, he says, he's noticed a significant drop-off in the amount of junk in the portions of the river and Rott Creek that run through the woods.

“The kind of crazy stuff we used to pull out of the river we no longer see,” he says.

As a result, he says, volunteers are focusing more on improving the woods that border the waterways.

If you walk through that area today, he says, you'll find an oak tree that has fallen into the creek because its root system was destabilized by a nonnative buckthorn on one side and a honeysuckle on the other. That's the kind of thing his team now focuses on preventing.

The results of cleaning out those nonnative species, he says, have been amazing. The woods now feature blackberries, gooseberries and wildflowers you never would have found even a few years ago.

Ask him what keeps him coming back and he tells you a story that dates back about 15 years.

He was walking through the woods, he says, when he spotted a tire in the creek. He came back a few days later wearing waders and reached down to pull the tire out. It wouldn't budge. He got a spade to pry it out, but still it wouldn't give. So he reached down deeper into the water and mud and discovered the tire was connected to an axle.

A year later he found himself in the same woods at the same creek with a bunch of people from the sheriff's office who finally were able to pull the tire and axle out of the muck and discovered they were attached to a car.

“I grew up around woods so I'm really friendly with woods,” Zubenko says. “I like them.”

So does George, which is why organizers now offer “educational moments” as part of their program in which they tell volunteers about the dangers of planting invasive species in their own yards “because they wind up in the forest preserves and end up costing us money (to remove them),” George says.

Always expanding

George herself has been involved in the River Sweep program for four years as a community liaison in Naperville. But here's the funny part: She's never pulled a single tire or plastic bottle out of the river.

“It's terrible,” she says with a laugh, “because I'm the one who's back at the office trying to coordinate things.”

She and the others must be doing something right, because the program continues to expand and this year is adding six towns: Winfield, Westmont, Bensenville, Oak Brook, Oakbrook Terrace and Bartlett.

It's nice to add new towns and people, but Jim Kleinwachter is still out along the river every spring, too, and he's understandably proud of what he's created.

“I feel good about it,” he says. “I have pictures of my kids helping when they were 5 years old and then I have pictures of my kids helping in their 20s.”

There are plenty of signs the river is healthier, he says, including the return of smallmouth bass.

“I haven't given up yet,” he says. “It's getting better.”

George thinks so, too, and she'd like you to come out Saturday to ensure our waterways never again become the junk piles that so frustrated Kleinwachter more than 20 years ago.

It's just three hours. The Conservation Foundation and community liaisons will provide you with everything you need. You'll be doing some good and, who knows, maybe you'll make a couple friends.

“All you have to provide,” George says, “is the effort and enthusiasm.”

If you go

Anyone interested in participating in the DuPage River Sweep from 9 a.m. until noon Saturday, May 21, should visit theconservationfoundation.org/sweep for a full list of cleanup and restoration sites or to register.