River devotee banks on helpers for cleanup

Laura J. Gardner/The Journal Gazette Abigail Frost picks up trash around the Maumee River on Tuesday afternoon. She invites anyone that wants to keep the rivers clean to join her April 22.

If you’re curious about the state of Fort Wayne’s rivers, all you have to do is look for the signs.

The signs aren’t cryptic. They’re white with brownish lettering, warning people that it’s not a good idea to swim in the water and that exposure to the water at times can pose a health hazard.

Some people fish in the river, but Abigail Frost says she’s never seen anyone catch anything but carp. It raises the question. If you caught, say, a walleye in one of the city’s rivers, would you eat it?

Just take a canoe trip down the Maumee from Hosey Dam on Anthony Boulevard to Riverhaven, a distance of a little more than two miles. You’ll see more than 100 pipes from industries and septic fields pouring stuff into the river, Frost says. What’s coming out of the pipes? Who knows.

Then there’s the trash.

It’s sad, Frost says. The rivers have the potential to be beautiful, but the city has turned its back on them, literally. All that faces the rivers are the backs of garages and body shops and other businesses.

Few people clean the rivers, either. Frost says she asked about using community service workers to pick the trash off the banks and was told that officials don’t have insurance to cover offenders doing that sort of work.

Just think what a difference it would make, Frost says, if everyone would pick up one bag of trash from the Maumee, which she says is the most clogged with junk because the city’s other rivers flow into it.

But no one does that.

Except, that is, Save Maumee Grassroots Organization.

Save Maumee is a tiny organization. It has one member, Frost. Maybe two if you count her friend Ryan Bailey.

The two can’t do a lot to halt the pollution of the city’s rivers, Frost says. They can’t stop sewer overflows after heavy rains or stop industrial pollution or stop the septic fields draining untreated water, though she has put together a presentation discussing all the pollutants that go into the rivers in Fort Wayne.

But she can pick up the trash. So once a year, on Earth Day, Frost tries to round up volunteers and joins them on a one-mile stretch of the Maumee, from Hosey Dam on Anthony Boulevard to the Ravine, a home-made BMX bike track, to pick up trash.

It’s a meaningful effort, doing something instead of talking about what needs to be done.

Last year, the first year the organization tried it, about 60 people showed up and scoured the banks of the river, picking up about a ton of trash, Frost says. Junk ranged from the typical refuse to a car bumper, computers and a 30-foot square plastic tarp.

Frost will be organizing the same cleanup this year, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 22. She’s asking volunteers to bring muddin’ shoes, garbage bags and gloves and show up on Niagara Drive, where she lives, to join the effort. She will provide some gloves and bags until supplies are gone.

Frost has also received donations of seed for plants recommended by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Part of the day’s events will involve seeding the banks. To prevent the seed from being washed away, she got a discount on some soil erosion control mats to hold seeds in place.

The grass, a mix of Indian grass and typical lawn varieties, has roots that reach as deep as 10 feet when mature, which keeps the grass strong in droughts and keeps it in place during floods. The grass helps prevent erosion and filters out pollutants, Frost says.

Frost used the same seed last year, and it grew well before being washed away by floods. She hopes the anti-erosion mats, which will eventually decompose, will prevent that from happening again this year.

She isn’t sure how many volunteers will show up this year, but she recruits people through the year, distributes flyers and hopes people show up.

That’s about all she can do, operate on faith.

“I have no reputation,” she says. “I’m a small organization. It’s like no one cares. But people do care. They just don’t know” that they can make a difference.

You can see a Web site of Frost’s organization at www.savemaumee.org.

You don’t have to make reservations for the April 22 cleanup, though. Just show up if you’re so inclined.