Tuesday, August 6, 2013

The Merrimack Near Pine Island

On this beautiful afternoon I decided to paddle a new (for me) stretch of the Merrimack River in Methuen which lies between Lowell and Lawrence.  A friend told me a good place to launch is the former parking lot where Bea's Sandwich Shop once stood.   Finding Bea's involved making several trips around the roundabout (aka rotary) at Rt. 93 and Rt. 110 before finally locating the vacant lot where there's a crude launch suitable only for cartop boats (Rt. 110 and Riverside Drive).  From there I launched within site of the Rt. 93 bridge.  A small island is directly across from the launch site and I rounded its downstream end before heading upriver towards Pine Island.  Trash was mostly encountered in 2 locations today,  both on the river's north shoreline...one just downriver of Bea's, and the other this jumble a little ways above Pine Island...

Once all was collected and properly stowed, my boat awaited me loaded and ready to go...
What was that old Roger Whittaker song?  "There's a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbor..."

The trip back downriver included the nice view of Pine Island seen in the opening photo.

Following the south side of the river I encountered a boom which may have been set to catch flotsam.  If that's the boom's purpose it seems to be working quite well as this photo attests...
There was enough trash behind this boom to fill my boat many times over.  However my boat was already full and I wondered if the boom might belong to the Clean River Project group as I'd passed one of their boats earlier...
According to the group's website, the Clean River Project tackles cleaning trash from the river on a large scale and has removed numerous vehicles, more than a thousand tires, and many thousands of Hooksett Disks (plastic media-disks from the Hooksett, NH Wastewater Treatment Plant located many miles upriver).

This section of the Merrimack River is a nice one, and aside from a small amount of powerboat traffic was relatively peaceful.  Several folks were seen enjoying a refreshing swim.

My haul of trash posed before being sorted and stowed...

There were 55 recyclable containers (12 redeemable) and 61 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish including plastic, Styrofoam, another plastic milk crate, and 5 more Hooksett Disks (1379 disks TD)
Trash YTD = 3794




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