Clean streets lead to clean water

My obsession with picking up trash in the neighborhood began late 2019 with adopting five nearby drains with the Adopt A Drain (https://mn.adopt-a-drain.org/) that Rennie so nicely wrote about in the May 2024 edition of the Monitor. After I began noticing the trash and natural debris in the drains almost everywhere I looked, I saw trash that I didn’t want to end up in the Mississippi River.
Since June 2020, I’ve been part of a group effort to get together about once a month and pick up trash in the Hamline Midway neighborhood, which has resulted in 1,500 pounds of trash removed from our streets each year (that’s roughly 200 bags of trash!), preventing all this from polluting our waterways. Annually, about 100 Midway residents have spent about 200 hours picking up trash from 2020 until now. It’s a great way to get to know some neighbors, maybe even develop some friendships, and be active outside!
As residents of the Mississippi River watershed, what gets washed down storm drains ends up in the river. You may not think about this too much, but leaves and other natural debris like grass clippings contribute to excess nutrients to the river, which is bad for fish, bugs, and other animals that live in the water. Sometimes it even leads to less oxygen available for fish and other things that live in lakes, and we don’t want that!
So, if grass clippings blow from the boulevard into the street or when leaves fall from trees in the boulevard in autumn, be sure to sweep or rake those up to keep our water clean and aquatic life happy.
To make a bigger impact, a fun thing to do is borrow a storm drain stenciling kit from Friends of the Mississippi River (https://fmr.org/st-paul-storm-drain-outing-kits) and spray paint “Keep Em’ Clean, Drains to River” on your nearby drains. This serves as a reminder to anyone walking nearby not only to help clear drains of leaves and trash, but also that whatever goes down those drains ends up in the river.
Finally, a note about something that is necessary for people to stay safe in winter but is not good for our waterways: salt and chemical deicers. We have to use salt or other deicers to keep our sidewalks and roads safe in winter, but we can be more careful about the amount of salt we use or use an alternative to salt.
Did you know that just one teaspoon of salt or a chemical deicer permanently pollutes five gallons of fresh water? One option I saw someone use, and I then adopted, are black oil sunflower seeds. Not only are you creating a nonslip surface that absorbs heat and assists with melting, you’re also feeding neighborhood birds! You could also try sand and even kitty litter!
Join me and other neighbors in making a difference locally – in your own neighborhood – and clean the streets in order to ensure we have clean water! If you’re on Facebook, join the “Keep the Midway Clean” group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/keepthemidwayclean/). You can also email info@hamlinemidway.org to get in touch with Justin Lewandowski, Hamline Midway Coalition’s Organizing Director.