Auburn students are invited to join the University’s Department of Risk Management and Safety and Alternative Student Breaks to help clean up the Parkerson Mill Creek on Sunday, Feb. 25.
Tom McCauley, program manager for Risk Management and Safety, said that the Wellness Kitchen is where the creek first appears and the cleanup will begin there.
“We’ve been doing cleanups for five, six years at least,” McCauley said. “It’s generally just a few staff members, sometimes we try to engage a larger audience, but sometimes that just doesn’t work out very well.”
The department aims for two cleanups per year, McCauley said. For this cleanup, the Office of Sustainability is joining with Alternative Student Breaks to promote the creek cleanup.
“Although we’re partnering up with ASB group and their team, it’s certainly open to anyone within the campus that is interested in helping," McCauley said. "We’ll be there at 2 p.m., and we’ll stay until 4 p.m. ”
McCauley said the goal of the cleanup is to clear the banks and water of litter.
“The University is a regulated stormwater management community regulated by UPA, and as such we’ve got to develop programs to reduce the amount of pollutants that are entered into our stream systems through our stormwater conveyances,” McCauley said.
McCauley said in the past they have had little student participation, likely due to the cleaning days previously being scheduled during the week.
“This is a way for us to engage the public and involve the public, public being campus [and] community, to take an active role in removing litter and debris from our stream segment as it kind of traverses through campus,” McCauley said.
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