“It’s very repulsive to me,” said Spring Lake Park City Council member Barbara Goodboe-Bisschoff. “It’s just a shame.”
Goodboe-Bischoff is also part of the Coon Creek Watershed District (CCWD) citizen advisory committee. She and other volunteers spent an early April day picking up trash at Springbrook.
“We were in this exact same spot last year then coming back here and looking at all this garbage that’s tossed out here,” Goodboe-Bisschoff said. “It’s kind of mind-boggling that people don’t care. They just toss.”
Jessica Lindemyer is with the CCWD and was one of the volunteers cleaning up around Springbrook Creek.
“We pick our site locations based on the amount of debris that is seen throughout the season and which locations can have the most impact on protecting our water quality,” Lindemyer said.
The garbage collectors fanned out around Springbrook Creek and picked up anything that didn’t belong on the ground or in the water. Debris that goes in the creek can have a domino effect.
“Because trash gets into our water system and then it ends up in the Mississippi,” Goodboe-Bisschoff said.
Trash talk
Springbrook Creek is in the shadow of Northtown Mall and close to major roads. That proximity means there is plenty of garbage on the ground and that volunteers had no trouble filling up their Hefty bags.
“We find a whole bunch of different things,” Lindemyer said. “We find a lot of plastic shopping bags. But we also find things that you might not expect. We just picked up parts of a vacuum cleaner. We find random clothes and shoes.”
The garbage definitely put Goodboe-Bischoff in a trash-talking mood.
“If you go around different places in the world, you even spit on a sidewalk they will put you in jail,” Goodboe-Bisschoff said. “We’re pretty lenient in this country. It’s wrong to do this. Totally wrong.”
Keeping area creeks, lakes, rivers and streams garbage-free is something that Lindemyer believes we need to focus more on
“It is definitely a problem that continues to grow,” Lindemyer said. “I think a lot of us learn as kids not to litter, but that doesn’t mean that litter still doesn’t happen – whether intentionally or unintentionally. So it’s definitely something that we need to stay on as a community and as our communities grow.”
