Bottles, flip-flops and a pool: Groups use state grants to clean up waterways
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy has announced more than $100,000 in grants to for local governments and nonprofits across the state to clean up small waterways.
The Michigan Clean Water Corps Program, known as MiCorps, has allocated 27 grants worth a total of $102,273. Four organizations got the largest grants — worth $5,000 — including the city of Ecorse near Detroit, the city of Lansing, the Newaygo Conservation District and the Shiawassee County Health Department.
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“If we were to try to do all the work we’re doing without grants, it just wouldn’t even be possible,” said Luke Cotton, executive director of the Newaygo Conservation District.
Conservation districts were put in place during the Dust Bowl era to help farmers find new sustainability practices.
“Since that time, conservation districts have branched out to a lot of different things, including this grant,” Cotton said.
It’s the second year in a row the district has received the MiCorps grant. Last year, the money allowed it to partner with the Muskegon River Watershed Assembly and the Muskegon River Cleanup Co. to host a large community river cleanup day. More than 300 volunteers showed up to clean a stretch of the Muskegon River from the Bridgeton Boat Launch to the Maple Island Boat Launch. The grant paid for trash bags, T-shirts and food for volunteers.
In total, 1,846 beverage containers, 63 flip-flops, 30lbs of lumber, 3.5 gallons of broken glass, 13 vapes, eight lighters, two fishing poles, three float tubes, a propane tank, and two cellphones were taken from one stretch of river during the single-day event.
“The Muskegon goes and empties into Lake Michigan, so anything flowing down the river inevitably ends up contaminating the Great Lakes as well. So if it’s something that might leak contaminants into the water, we could be talking about damaging the ecosystem that fish and macroinvertebrates count on in that stream,” Cotton said.
He said many people don’t realize how the river would look if cleanup efforts like this weren’t taking place. The $5,000 grant will once again allow the three groups to team up for a cleanup day this summer.
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West Michigan governments and organizations will receive 10 of the grants, including nearly $20,000 to help launch the Barry Conservation District. The Macatawa Coordinating Council, the city of Battle Creek and the Muskegon Conservation District will also receive grants, along with Ottawa County Water Resources.
Chelsey Lawton, field operations supervisor for the Muskegon Conservation District, echoed that grants make up the bulk of the group’s budget. This is the third year in a row that her district received a MiCorps grant, which will also be used to fund a community cleanup event.
“We gather volunteers and we spend a morning, a chunk of a day, cleaning up plastics and trash out of Ryerson Creek,” Lawton said. “Ryerson Creek had a lot of restoration work done in the recent past, so making sure that we’re cleaning all of that out and keeping it a good water source is really important.”
In the past two years of cleanup, Lawton said volunteers pulled out bicycles, a plastic above-ground pool, dozens of bags of trash and a lot of microplastic.
She added that a lot of people don’t notice what’s in the river when they drive over it. Geting the community involved lets them see it firsthand.
“When you really get down into the creek and see how much actually down there that people just throw (away) and you don’t necessarily think that it’s going to end up there but it does and then it ends up in Lake Muskegon and then it ends up in Lake Michigan, which can cause all sorts of problems. So it’s really important to get involved,” Lawton explained.
The Muskegon Conservation District will host this year’s creek cleanup even on Saturday, July 13, at 9 a.m.
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MiCorps was launched by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in 2004 to “engage the public in collecting water quality data for use in water resources management and protection programs.”
The MiCorps Volunteer Stream Monitoring Program uses grants to monitor water quality and stream habitats across the state, including grants to launch new groups, grants to continue testing and grants to cover maintenance for testing equipment.
The cleanup grant program began in 1998 and is funded by fees collected from water quality protection license plates sold through the Secretary of State’s office. The full list of grants is available here.
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