Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1024592
68 SEPTEMBER 2018 / I N - D E P T H / VO LU N T E E R S L E A D T H E WAY According to Jean Gilmore of the 3M Methuen Community Relations Council, 3M has supported Clean River Project for close to 10 years, through employee volunteerism and monetary grants, including a $20,000 Environmental Reserve Fund Grant from 3Mgives, which Clean River Project used to purchase a boat and new booms. 3M employees also volunteer for cleanup days, wading into the river to pull out tires, furniture, or other garbage and cleaning the trash along the riverbanks. "Hands, feet, clothes…everything gets dirty when you are working a cleanup event," Gilmore says. "e most eye- opening experience was probably seeing all of the hypoder- mic needles that washed up on the banks of the river." In 2016 Clean River Project was also awarded a $40,000 Massachusetts Environmental Trust grant to remove motor vehicles from the river. But even with volunteers, dona- tions, and grants, the work of maintaining and emptying the booms and disposing of the hundreds of tons of trash they collect is expensive, and Morrison wants cities and towns along the river to pick up some of those costs. "We're getting to the point now where we can't do it Clean River Project uses 100-foot-long trash containment devices called booms that catch trash on its way downriver. Trash makes its way downstream toward the ocean, often collecting in spots like this one in Haverhill, where 3,000 tires have been pulled out of the river in three years. Proudly representing: