- June 13, 2024
- Posted by: LWB
- Category: News
Dozens of volunteers scoured Nesbitt Park on Saturday to clean it up for Earth Day and planted trees to help keep the Susquehanna River healthy.
“We do this every year prior to the Riverfront Parks Committee’s Earth Day event, where we will host 400 to 600 elementary school students. We’ve been doing this for about 25 years,” said John Maday, committee executive director.
This year’s educational Earth Day event is scheduled for Friday.
“A week or two before we schedule this, Suskie Bassmasters takes the lead. They coordinate with us and we get the park clean so we could host the students,” Maday said.
Chris Ostrowski, of Suskie Bassmasters, estimated the group filled about 40 bags with trash and dead fallen branches.
Some members of the organization also cleared mud from the boat launch that accumulated during recent high-water events and dug a channel through grass to allow rainwater pooled in the handicap parking area to drain into the river.
Almost all the work was completed in two hours, by 10 a.m.
“We had a nice turnout. Usually we’re here till 12 or one o’clock, “Ostrowski said, noting that volunteers from Junior Leadership Northeast helped speed things along.
Riverfront Parks Committee member Rachael Stark said the 2024 Junior Leadership Northeast Park Pioneers project group helped tidy up the park and planted a line of seven trees several yards from the riverbank.
Vincent Cotrone, an urban forester with Penn State University and president of the Riverfront Parks Committee, identified one of the saplings as a Kentucky coffee tree, which he described as “tough as nails, tolerant to flooding and a nitrogen mixer.”
Other trees planted include oak, sycamore and American Linden, Cotrone said.
“We need more trees along the river to hold the soil in place and prevent erosion of sediment into the river,” Cotrone said.