A small army of volunteers collected over a hundred bags of trash on two consecutive Saturdays this past April.  On April 21, the Belmont Citizens Forum organized a cleanup of the woods along South Pleasant Street between Trapelo Road and the Clark Street Bridge.  And on the following Saturday, the Chenery Middle School Ecology Club, led by Nancy Davis and sixth-grade teacher Benjamin Ligon, sponsored a cleanup around Clay Pit Pond.  Both cleanups were sorely needed.

The one on South Pleasant Street, which attracted approximately 30 volunteers, netted hundreds of plastic grocery bags, supermarket coupons, and sales receipts apparently blown there from a nearby parking lot; innumerable coffee cups, candy bar wrappers, and cigarette butts; and, farther off the road, glass liquor bottles of all shapes and sizes.   In the stream that rushes down the hillside from McLean, volunteers found oily paper towels left over from a recent oil spill cleanup on the property.

The largest finds were made on the steep hill between Pleasant Street and the railroad tracks, where volunteers found a rusted bed frame and the mangled remains of a metal shopping cart.

Around Clay Pit Pond, spring flood waters left large chunks of debris on the shore, in addition to the usual litter that accumulates in front of the high school.  The Belmont Highway Department had carried away much of the flood debris in advance.  But the 65 volunteers who arrived on Saturday found plenty of trash left to pick up.  Plastic water bottles were everywhere, remarked the co-coordinator Nancy Davis.

“Now so many people carry them — cyclists, walkers, kids — and they’re not covered by the bottle bill.  Often they just end up on the ground.”

Other ubiquitous items were pens, straws, bottle caps and rings, and chunks of Styrofoam.  Davis pointed out that all the storm drains in that area of town drain into Clay Pit Pond, so trash is carried there from surrounding streets.

The group even borrowed a boat from the Belmont Fire Department so that they could fish objects out of the water with hooks.  They hauled up a car battery and a bicycle, among other things.

Now, a month later, the pond area still looks pretty and pristine.  But South Pleasant Street began accumulating new trash within days of the cleanup.

—Sharon Vanderslice