This month Grantham RiverCare moved a little away from the River Witham, concentrating on the Mow Beck, one of the many tributaries that join the river around our town.
This was their 103rd clean up.
They met on Old Wharf Road where the Mow Beck flows beside the retail park and then under the town for a mile and a half before reappearing by the white bridge in Wyndham Park.
Three socially distanced groups went searching for litter upstream, in the steep gulley downstream, and one group picking litter from the bushes along the roadside.
Some of this was quite unsavoury as parked lorries often decant their ‘waste’ into the vegetation. Thanks needs to be expressed to the support given by Anglian Water and RiverCare for the delivery of a six foot long picker, which made light work of some of the more distantly discarded items.
In just over an hour, the group of volunteers collected 15 bags of litter, a suitcase and shopping basket, five car tyres, a game controller and several lengths of industrial hose.
One of the concerns is that litter in this area will eventually make its way under the town and into the wider river system. It would appear that the shared rear delivery areas for the big stores – Currys PC World, Matalan, TK Maxx and Home Bargains – do not have sufficient safeguards in place to stop their packaging blowing into the Mow Beck.
RiverCare plans to write to SKDC to highlight this as an issue. Perhaps a litter bin would help the area?
LC Packaging, further up Old Wharf Road, should be commended as they had a spotless yard in comparison!
The group’s 104th clean-up will be held in June as part of the Great British Spring Clean when they will be joined by Lincolnshire Rivers Trust staff and volunteers to return back to the Witham riverside in town.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.