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Lauren E. Toney
For the Sun-News
MESILLA - Volunteers worked to restore a 3-mile stretch of the Rio Grande by picking up trash Saturday near the Calle del Norte Bridge as part of the Southwest Environmental Center's River Clean-Up project.
About 25 volunteers trekked along the Rio Grande from the Calle del Norte Bridge to the Mesilla Dam, gathering broken bottles, wrappers and clothing items, license plates, tattered luggage and even stumbling upon a discarded washing machine left behind in the largest river system in the Chihuahuan Desert.
"A lot of our work is centered on restoring the Rio Grande," said Jason Burke, canvass director for the Southwest Environmental Center. "It's definitely a lot of work."
The exact amount of trash collected during the three-hour cleanup event was unknown Saturday afternoon, but twice as many volunteers as the event typically sees lined clear bags filled with rubbish along the road from the bridge to the dam where they would later be collected.
"It's a huge area and there is a lot of trash," Burke said. "We will typically see a lot of broken beer bottles, but this morning we discovered a washing machine that someone had left on a sandbar. We're trying to figure out how we're going to get that out of the river."
The Southwest Environmental Center hosts river cleanup events quarterly to keep up with garbage disposed in the Rio Grande and along its banks, he said.
Most of the wetlands, bosques and two-thirds of the Rio
"It's so great to do outdoor events like these," Burke said. "There were several students from the university who came to help out."
Michelle McKay, 24, a graduate student at NMSU studying wildlife science, gathered about four large garbage bags-worth of litter from the Rio Grande during Saturday's cleanup, along with husband Marshall McKay, 34. It was the couple's first time participating in the effort.
"We're both interested in the environment and we'd love to be a part of this again," Michelle McKay said.
Bottles, license plates, flip flops, luggage and a mattress were among the myriad of items the couple found while collecting trash from around the river.
"Some areas were worse than others," she said. "It was surprising to see how many strange things people have just tossed into the river."
The Southwest Environmental Center, which works to protect and restore native wildlife and their habitats throughout the region, assisted in spearheading efforts to open the Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park, which opened in 2008, and hosts the annual Raft the Rio event, Burke said.
"In April we're also planning a planting event in the La Mancha Wetlands," he added.
The organization's headquarters are at Las Cruces' downtown mall and feature a library, information displays and a 600-gallon Rio Grande aquarium.
For more information on the Southwest Environmental Center, call (575) 522-5552, or visit wildmesquite.org.
Lauren E. Toney can be reached at (575) 541-5447; ltoney@lcsun-news.com.
