With rain threatening, but holding off, twenty four volunteers set about cleaning the green river corridor through Grantham on Saturday 20th August, for Grantham Rivercare’s 107th clean up!
Despite this, they were able to cover the riverside from Bridge End Road to Wyndham Park and also branched out to clean the whole length of Dudley Road and Welham Street.
Without their stalwart canoeist this time, some of the river went untouched.
This included, unfortunately, four bags of domestic waste put out for Council collection that someone had thoughtlessly lobbed into the river opposite the College.
Thanks to the lady who phoned us with the news.
Three of members returned on Sunday afternoon to recover the waste from the river.
The usual treat of tea and cake was made easier by the kind donation by John Knowles (RiverCare founder) of a tea urn. Cakes wereprovided by a volunteer from the Wyndham Park Visitor Centre and were delicious.
The haul included seven bags of refuse, six shopping trolleys and three bags of recyclable litter collected – and with that, the rain finally fell.
RiverCare volunteers witnessed another pollution incident (Friday 19th August) where the Mow Beck reaches the River Witham at the white bridge in Wyndham Park.
They have experienced numerous milky discolourations over the last year or so, but this time the river turned a bright aquamarine blue.
Fish swimming in this area were possibly showing some signs of stress as theybroke the surface.This was reported to Anglian Water, who attended the scene and collected samples for analysis.
The Environment Agency were also told as it is their role to track down the source of the pollution.This is a difficult task as the Mow Beck runs for a mile and a half in a culvert under the town making detection very difficult.
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