Archeological dig...after a fashion.

I took part in an archeological dig today.

Well...not quite.

Took part in another cleanup organized by the Stewards of Cootes Watershed, near the Desjardins Canal, along the northeast shore of Cootes Paradise. 75 volunteers from McMaster came out. Which would mean being able to tackle a sizable chunk of the problem.

And the amount of garbage was, pardon my language, fucking mind boggling. Not even the bigger stuff, like bottles and cans. That had already been cleaned up. No. Small plastic detritus. Staggering amounts. Sorting through it was like an archeological dig. Delving into a period of very recent human rubbish.

Bottle caps, cigarello mouth pieces, tampon applicators, tamper proof seals, golf balls, 1" drug baggies, tips for glue tubes, tips for caulking tubes, corks, stir sticks, straws, coffee cup lids, freezie tubes, bobbers, balloons, combs, lighters, happy meal toy parts, kinder eggs, present wrapping ribbon, syringes, googly eyes, tooth brushes, caps for cap guns, retail store hangers, badminton birdies, hair barrettes, zip ties, plastic cutlery, busted tictac boxes, plastic bags, green army men, styrofoam cups, ping pong balls, elastics, Q-tips, cassette wheels, and all sorts of unidentifiable pieces. I could go on. Found a fist sized snow globe ball.

I just chose a spot, any spot, and got to work. I put on knee pads, spread out a tarp and an inflatable seat pad, situated myself in a spot in the shade near Tys Theysmeyer, the Head of Natural Lands at Royal Botanical Gardens. Kneeling, bending, sitting, squatting – I used a trowel and well gloved hands to sift through the area above the sandy and rocky beach. About a two meter circle. And I filled a large garbage bag. Full. Everyone else filled dozens and dozens of bags. The pile was 4, maybe 5 meters long, meter, meter and half high and wide. The weight was an approximate 200 to 225 kilograms. A tire. A road pylon. All in an area about 30 to 40 meters long.

And if I went back tomorrow I could fill a similar sized bag in a few hours. And do it again many, many times. 

But what is a lot more disturbing were the pellets. Lentil sized pellets. Gravel almost. And not a few of them. The soil is laced with them. A handful of soil would net you dozens and dozens of them. I asked Tys and even he wasn’t sure. I asked if it could be silica gel. Someone else suggested they might be the granules that fill diapers. Most of the objects I listed are graspable, recognizable. As tedious and gross as it is, it is doable. Granules the size of a match head, by the millions. Just in that one spot. How do you get that out?

And what was depressing about it was that most of this, nearly all of this massive amount of plastic, was that it wasn’t an accretion from decades past, but at most 5, maybe 10 years of stuff. Most of what I found was a fairly recent thing.

Do what you can, where you are, with the abilities you have, with the time you have.

Coldwater Creek Cleanup

Spent an evening a while back helping clean debris out of Coldwater Creek, one of the many watersheds feeding into Cootes Paradise. It is one of the only ones cold enough for fish to hatch in it. The name is something of a giveaway. The biologists at RBG have identified the shopping carts and tires in the creek as a problem. While they would love to have them removed, staffing and budget limitations prevent them from doing all they would like to do. This is where volunteers come in. (Although sadly, Alan and his 9 year old son and I were the only ones, as two other volunteers never showed. As I was to find out, this is a job for more than two people.)

I have been through a lot of areas in Hamilton, but this one was new to me. And it was rough. Getting in wasn’t so easy, especially carrying equipment, and I can only imagine that trying to haul some of this junk out is even more of a challenge.

Decided that since I would be up to my waist in water wearing waders, to bring the Map’mups with some tools on it so I could easily access them. I knew I would likely be cutting away wood, debris, rope, wire, etc. And I did.

Only took a few furtive pictures. Standing up to my waist in water, trying to maintain my balance on uneven, mucky creek bottom, with wet, filthy hands, in the moments between doing stuff, didn’t lend itself to photo taking.

The first of several shopping carts being dislodged with the aid of a come-along.

Alan back up on shore operating the come-along.

I really don’t think these could have been gotten out without the use of a winch. Those carts were stuck in there. Even when they were dislodged, they were often laden with sticks and the foulest smelling muck. And they were HEAVY! I think I’m pretty fit, but having to manhandle four of these things to dislodge all that shit, moving them so I could disconnect under tension chains, and then haul them up the bank - after two hours of that, I was beat.

Glubglub....glubbbbllluggggluubb.......

The first of several tires.

Yanking another tire right out of the creek bank.

The creek in either direction of where I was standing.

The light was fading, I was pooped, and we still had to make our way out with chains and come-alongs and a few other tools, so we called it a night. There will still be shit for us to remove another time.

Cootes Paradise Cleanup

I mentioned a cleanup around Cootes Paradise I participated in a while back. Went and helped again a few weeks ago.

On Princess Point, looking west towards Dundas peak.

 On Princess Point, looking east towards the Iroquois bar.

Some of the volunteers hard at work.

A section of the cleaned up shoreline.

The work was like a combination archeological dig/forensic crime scene investigation. Because of the flow pattern, all the plastic lands on that side. Over time, rocks, logs, UV light and wave action serve to grind it all up into tiny little pieces. The aim is to try and get as much of that as possible out. Which pretty much requires kneeling and painstakingly picking out every little piece. 

An idea of what we were cleaning up. Tampon applicators, cigarello ends, sucker sticks, straws, coffee cup lids, etc. Essentially anything that would float - ie plastic.

Another aspect of the cleanup was removing the logs and branches from the shoreline. Combined with wave action, they roll back and forth, smash into one another, and consequently grind the plastic into little pieces. They were placed by the side of the path so the city can come by with a tree chipper and spray the wood back onto the shoreline.

Princess Point.

Good work team!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead

Dundas EcoPark

Terrific documentary about the part of the world I live in and why I like it so. Nice to see aerial footage of the areas I go wandering in.

Touches on the importance of preserving swathes of nature for the health of the flora and fauna, but also because it improves cities, and the quality of life of the people that inhabit them. This area is part of the area that will be encompassed by the proposed Cootes to Escarpment Park. Also touches on the history of the native inhabitants (the earliest known examples of agriculture in Ontario was found here), and a little of the history of European settlement, such as the creation of the Desjardins Canal.

Cootes Paradise Cleanup

It seems I’ve been doing a lot of this kind of stuff lately. Still not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Guess it’s good I and others are doing it – just bad it needs to be done at all.

The Stewards of Cootes Watershed have been coordinating periodic cleanups in and around Cootes Paradise in the last year. The amount of crap they’ve been hauling out there has been really impressive. Slightly less impressive when you consider that there is any need at all to remove dozens of tires and dozens of shopping carts and hundreds of bags of garbage out of a gem of a spot at all.

Being really fond of the place, I wanted to go down and help. The spot being tackled today was at Princess Point.

Beavers are making an appearance again in this area after being away for quite some time. Not sure what they’re planning on doing with these though, if anything. One felled right beside the other.

Got there earlier than the appointed time, so I got a brew on, pulled out Mongoliad and read for a while.

This fella came strutting by while I sat and had a cup of tea and read my book. I believe this is a hybrid goose.

Two maps of the area we were in.

Various critters, both human and avian floating and paddling on the water.

Some people out on Princess Point proper. The earliest archeological evidence of agriculture in Ontario is right here. 

Dave and Gunther across the mouth of the Chedoke Creek from me.

Second bucket of trash I collected. 

And to any of the ladies reading this, I just want to say...when you flush your goddamn tampon applicators down the toilet, they “go somewhere” all right....namely the shoreline of a picturesque body of water. I cleaned up 37 of them today....in maybe a ten square meter area. And the other thing is one of those cigarello mouth pieces. I collected about twice as many of those. Gawd, people are disgusting.

While this particular photo was taken about a year ago, along the shore of Cootes Paradise, it demonstrates the problem. While all the bottles and tampon applicators and all the other detritus of “humanity” are just plain unsightly, the bigger problem is that years and decades of ultra-violet light and the action of waves and rocks, grind all that plastic down into little pieces. I spent quite a bit of my time picking up little itty bitty bits. Not doing it leads to awful sights like this. Animals dying pointless deaths from having their insides filled with plastic. (Although I should point out that while this photo is not of one taken here, but of a bird found on Midway in the Pacific, I doubt it is a problem endemic only to that part of the world.)

To birds it just looks like berries or bugs or whatever else their tiny brains think they can eat.

8 people, 3 hours, maybe 200 meters of shoreline. Sad that it needs to happen at all. The tire in the middle was my find. Although it represents only one of many dozens that have been retrieved from Cootes in the last year. According to Tys Theysmeyer, an Aquatic Ecologist and Head of Conservation for Royal Botanical Gardens, in the 15 years he’s been at his job, he has found the carcasses of 4 snapping turtles that have somehow become trapped in tire rims.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead