With heavy rains this summer, Scott Cassavant and his crew of the Lynyrd Skymmr have been scooping up debris eight hours a day from rivers around the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“When there is a heavy rain with a lot of current flow, what is a living, thriving tree will become uprooted and ends up in the river,” Cassavant said.
It’s important to remove the large logs because they are a navigational hazard to boats out on the water. It’s also important to remove smaller pieces of plastic.
“They don’t bio-degrade. They take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to break down,” Cassavant said.
The plastics are also a source of bacteria. Logs are natural; however, if you hit one with your boat, it will likely cause major damage.
“This could put a hole in the side of a fiberglass boat,” Cassavant said.
With the help of the Aquatic Trash Skimmer, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District collected enough trash to fill 61 20-cubic-yard dumpsters in 2013.