Clean Jordan Lake hosted two wonderful, community service events over the weekend of September 11.

We were one of 80 nonprofits to offer community service on the Day of Remembrance organized by Activate Good (activategood.org) . The idea was to unite on this day to honor those lost on 9/11 with volunteerism and acts of kindness.

Activate Good 9-11 Digital Media workers

Nearly 2,000 volunteers participated. Of these, 31 volunteered with CJL representing Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, EMC Corporation, Digital P Media and the Durham Literacy Center. They removed about 40 bags of trash and five tires from a chronic problem area on Wilderness Island, near the entrance of Robeson Creek into the Haw River Arm. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers later picked up these bags by boat.

Each rainfall flushes more trash down the Haw River to end up in this cove and in many others further down towards the dam.

Then on Sunday of that weekend, 24 student volunteers from Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity at UNC-CH came to the Marthas Chapel Rd. access to the shoreline near the Farrington Point bridge. They had the extremely challenging job of removing hundreds of pieces of trash caught in between large rocks forming the rip rap around the bridge.

In addition, the group removed trash from over 1/2 mile of shoreline leading over to Marthas Chapel Rd., littered with stuff left behind by careless visitors.

The trash on the rip rap was not only the usual assortment of broken beer bottles and beer cans. These volunteers also had to tug and pull at hundreds of feet of fishing line, some with lures attached, snagged on rocks and ready to be entangled by birds.

And even more disgusting than the fishing line and broken beer bottles was the tens of camping propane tanks. Volunteers were yanking them out from among the rocks. I'm told that these tanks are attached to lanterns for night fishing.

In less than two hours, these wonderful Alpha Phi Omega volunteers removed 26 heavily loaded bags of trash and one tire.

All this stuff is here because users of the lake's shoreline seem insensitive to their environment. Ironically, their trash is destroying the very place they want to go back to!!

Remembering 9/11 with Community Service