MILWAUKEE – Every year, Earth Day brings out thousands of volunteers to help keep rivers clean. Milwaukee Riverkeeper organized its 22nd annual clean-up at 50 sites across the city, where 4,000 volunteers participated.
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service writes,
“We have three really important rivers in Milwaukee that flow into Lake Michigan,” said Jennifer Bolger Breceda, executive director of Milwaukee Riverkeeper for the past three years. She added that 1.3 million people rely on drinking water from Lake Michigan, “so it’s really critical that we steward the resources we have and take care of them.”
Since this year’s river cleanup fell on Earth Day and was the 22nd cleanup on the 22ndday of April, Breceda wanted to do something special. She worked with Lindsay Stevens Gardner, executive director of Rock the Green, to create a mini-Earth Day festival for the post-cleanup celebration in Estabrook Park, 4400 N. Estabrook Drive.
“Milwaukee Riverkeeper always puts on a post-cleanup celebration,” she said. “After pulling nearly 70,000 pounds of trash out of the rivers, [we] didn’t want to have an event that created more trash.”
For more, visit Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.
