The 23rd Annual French Creek Cleanup is on the books, and this year was record-breaking beyond our wildest dreams! We had an astonishing 806 registrants and welcomed three new Corporate Competition teams – Armstrong, BKD, and Channellock. All of these additions help us spread people out into the tributaries and other areas in the watershed that need help. Because of that, Cleanup volunteers – are you ready for this – kept 42,975 pounds of trash from polluting our waterways. We can’t even believe it!! And on top of that – the weather was pretty good! Some volunteers in the southern parts of the watershed had to contend with rain (and as usual, of course, they were not deterred!) But for the most part, our rain-move-it-on-out dances worked!
Congratulations to French Creek Community Theater for taking home the $500 award for the civic group bringing the most volunteers. Allegheny College won the award for the educational institution bringing the most volunteers. This is an amazing $1000 cash award, underwritten by the Peter A. Yeager Memorial Foundation, which goes to support science programs at the winning school. And congratulations to Process and Data Automation for winning the Corporate Competition and taking home the Traveling Hellbender Trophy!
We are so grateful to all of our sponsors, all of our picnic donors, all of our volunteers, and can’t say enough to thank them. It takes an extraordinary effort to pull off an event of this magnitude. And we are grateful to YOU – all of our cleanup participants, who come out for a day to care for and celebrate French Creek, no matter what the weather! We’ll post more updates and some photos next week, but for now, we are going to get some rest. THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this year’s Annual Cleanup another wonderful and successful event – we appreciate you!
Details on all of the day’s awards:
Judges Special – Cussewago Creekers for the first ever motorcycle!
Most Unusual:
First place – boat, Friends of Tamarack
Second place – beehive, Trash Blasters
Third Place – Pepsi dispenser, Acutec
Most Weight:
Small Team (1-5 people) – Cussewago Creekers, 1100 pounds
Medium Team (6-16 people) – Friends of Tamarack, 2100 pounds
Large Team (16+) – French Creek Community Theater, 4600 pounds
Most Participants:
Community Service Group – French Creek Community Theater, 60 participants
Educational Institution (Science/Environmental Science Award) – Allegheny College, 208 participants
French Creek Cleanup 2015 — made possible in part due to the generosity of these sponsors:
