Earth Day 2010 - Let's Help Clean Up Indian Creek
Happy Earth Day! Today marks the 40th anniversary of the celebration of Earth Day, and in honor of this great day, I want to share some information about an exciting upcoming Earth Day Event. I recently spoke with Charles Lancaster with Konterra, the organizer of the river party and cleanup that will take place this Saturday, April 24th at 5050 Powder Mill Road in Beltsville, Maryland. Volunteers will gather around 8:30 am to fortify themselves with coffee and donuts before heading to the creek, and the day will conclude with a barbecue lunch. Check out their flyer with more information here.
1. Who is Konterra and why are they organizing this River Party & Stream Clean Up?
Konterra is a progressive and environmentally engaged development company, currently working on the Konterra Town Center project located in Prince George's County, Maryland. In partnership with Forest City’s dynamic sustainability program, we have a GREEN story to tell. Our name is part of this vision: "Con" means "with" and "Terra" means "Earth." Together, Konterra stands for the future of environmentally-conscious residential and commercial development. The public will soon see their choice to live, work, and shop at Konterra Town Center as a way to make the world a better place. We're organizing a river clean up because we recognize the importance of working with our surrounding communities to minimize the potential environmental impacts of development as well as the importance of giving back to the community and beautifying Prince George’s County.
2. Konterra organized a similar event last Earth Day. Tell me a little bit about the success of that event. How much debris did you help remove from Indian Creek last year?
The 2009 Indian Creek cleanup was a great success: 80+ volunteers picked up 97 full bags of trash, 84 tires, and more than 40 large items including a bicycle, a TV, a computer monitor, a sink, a huge corrugated pipe, 2 car bumpers, 2 gas tanks and a part of a garage door. A large dumpster provided by Prince George's County was filled to the brim and a Prince George's County trash truck showed up to pick up additional items. All in all, approximately 500 yards of stream and floodplain were cleaned. We want to thank everybody who came and helped on this wonderful, sunny day. Special thanks for last year's event go to CCRIC and the Anacostia Watershed Society, as well as ATK Space Systems for allowing us to use their parking lot.
It sounds like this is going to be a fun and worthwhile event. Hope to see some of you out on the creek this Saturday morning!
