The New Jersey Clean Communities program once again lived up to its name when, on May 17, about 20 residents of Evesham came out to the Black Run Preserve to help clean up a section of their community.
The volunteers spent three hours, from 9 a.m. to noon, removing old tires, cigarette butts, cement and various other pieces of litter strewn throughout the Black Run.
New Jersey Clean Communities is the state-funded program that gives money to counties and communities to promote keeping local areas free of trash by providing mini-grants to various local groups to aide them in their cleanup efforts.
Evesham Clean Communities coordinator Debbie Pease was on hand at the cleanup event. She said the township has 22 clean communities groups, although the May 17 event was a strictly volunteer event comprised of an assortment of volunteers who were there only for their own desire to help keep the Black Run clean.
“The Boy Scouts, the Garden Club, it helps to fund these groups that might not be in existence if they didn’t have a little bit of funding,” Pease said. “It’s not a whole lot, but it helps them. It’s hard economic times, so it helps keep those groups that we want in our community here and able to survive. So it’s a really good program. It’s a win-win. We get our roads clean, they get a little funding, and everybody’s happy.”
Also at the cleanup was John Volpa, founder and chair of the Friends of the Black Run Preserve, the organization of volunteers formed to protect the ecology and beauty of the Black Run.
As volunteers arrived, Volpa directed them toward different areas that needed the most attention. He said the preserve, consisting of wetlands, forest, streams and bogs, has regularly been used as a place to illegally dispose of waste.
“This place has been a dumping ground for a long, long time, and unfortunately it still is because access is still not closed off,” Volpa said. “There’s a section I didn’t send anyone to because it’s piles of landscaping trash that someone has figured out that they can just drive in with their truck and just slide it off and it continues.”
Volpa said he and FBRP have been working toward a concept plan to help improve the 1,300-acre Black Run that he was scheduled to present to the Evesham Township Council during its final meeting in May.
“We got some grant money last year, had a visioning event, had a community day event which was also connected to a cleanup, led hikes, and we put together with professional trail planners a concept plan for the Black Run Preserve,” Volpa said. “As you can see, we need a safe parking lot, trailheads and the concept plan is done, and now it’s time to present it to mayor and council.”
One volunteer at the event, Kevin Basile, said he’s participated in various cleanups in the area before, and he uses the Black Run trails with his wife and dog so he likes to also help keep them clean. He said he’s always pleased to see people take an interest in preserving the open space around them.
“It’s always interesting to me how many people are always here when I come,” Basile said. “It’s nice to see that a decent amount of people care about maintaining trails. We live in a very suburban area where there isn’t that much free space, so it’s nice to see people taking an interest in the free spaces that we have and being responsible with them.”
