Volunteers Assist Environmental Commission's Annual Cleanup

Volunteers spent Saturday morning cleaning up debris around two wooded areas of Chatham Borough.

Run by the borough’s environmental commission, a handful of Chatham residents gathered for three hours to pick up trash and spruce up paths around and .

“We do this every year to re-establish the paths and clean up a bit,” John Tancredi, chairman of the environmental commission, said as he cleared part of the path at Shepard Kollock Park.

Tancredi said the commission usually performs its clean-up with help from the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and other residents. In fact, he said the Shepard Kollock path was originally established by a former Boy Scout as part of his Eagle Scout project.

Corkie Ziegler, who brought a number of scouts from Troop 8 to Shepard Kollock, said more troop members usually attend the clean-up. However, she said the troop also had a commitment with a food drive, “Scouting for Food.”

Tancredi said the Department of Public Works helps out a great deal every year, providing the wood chips the volunteers used on the paths to halt vegetation from growing and helping to get rid of the debris afterward.

As they scoured the path next to the Passaic River, the volunteers found everything from cans to wrappers to a few unusual items.

Sean McHugh, senior patrol leader for Troop 8, picked up a few interesting pieces of debris within the first hour, including an orange traffic cone that had been flattened into the ground and a piece of a lawn chair.

Another volunteer, Chatham Township resident Emmy Mills, had picked up what she called a “very artistically coiled spring.”

In addition to picking up trash, the volunteers cleared weeds from the paths and got rid of plants that Tancredi called “invasive species” and laid out additional dirt with wood chips to stop weed growth.