Group Works To Clean Up Maryland

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WJZ) -- Nearly every weekend, you'll find volunteers in the woods helping to remove the tons of trash that end up where it shouldn't be. 

Mike Schuh reports one group hopes what they did Saturday will lead to even more success in the future.

If you walk down a road on the Baltimore and Howard County line, you'll be amazed at what you'll find.  There's metal siding, the hard top from a jeep and moldy presswood.  Volunteers cared enough to find it and haul it out of the woods by the Patapsco.

"We need to take better care of our state; they're using our waterways as dumps," said volunteer Karen Williams.

"Our mission is to preserve, protect and enhance," said Becky McMillion with the Patapsco Heritage Greenway.

Not only is this a cleanup day, it's a day to train 25 people, who will supervise future cleanups.

"What they're doing is they're like the managers of stream cleanups.  A lot of people don't realize that for each cleanup, it takes 10 hours of planning time.  People show up at cleanups and don't realize there's a lot of behind-the-scenes things that happen," McMillion said.

The trash Kathy Swan removed include invasive species, vines and plants. 

"It gives the native plants space to grow again because they crowd out the native species," Swan said.

Hundreds of pounds will be removed Saturday, but tons and tons remain.

"People tend to be more respectful of things if they see a clean area," McMillion said.

Now with even more leaders trained, they are expected to be able to do even more of these stream cleanups this year.

If you're interested in helping the Patapsco Heritage Greenway, click here.