Volunteer Effort Clears Debris and Creates River Walk

After 21 years of community volunteer work to clean up the local polluted river, the citizens of Great Barrington, Mass. can officially declare their hard work a success as their Housatonic River Walk has been named a National Recreation Trail by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

As were many industrial towns, Great Barrington was built with its back to the Housatonic River. The river became polluted by raw sewage, dioxins, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and everyday household waste.

Local volunteers worked for 21 years to clean up the river. Photo: Americantrails.org

In 1988, the residents of Great Barrington decided to take the river back, starting a volunteer effort that would include 2,100 people over more than two decades.

Since then, volunteers have removed over 350 tons of debris from the river walk, including a burned-out drug store that was simply scraped off its foundation and bulldozed over the river bank. Inventory of the debris removed by the River Walk volunteers includes:

• 259 tons of rubble/garbage
• 11 tons of metal
• 84 tons of wood waste and firewood
• 3 tons of compost

The volunteers also replaced invasive plant species with thousands of native plants and trees and used aerobically brewed compost tea to develop symbiotic relationships present in healthy soils.

The tea is a coldwater extract of compost, where bacteria and fungi grow before being dispersed onto the soil. Prior to the soil restoration project, the river bank soil was a compilation of debris, fill and “just plain junk.”

The Housatonic River Walk will be formally recognized as a National Recreation Trail on June 13 by U.S. Representative John W. Olver.