Many thanks to everyone who turned out for our River Irk Clean Up event in Blackley.
Heavy rain over the previous few days resulted in the water quality being too poor for us to ask our volunteers to get in the river and get wet dragging rubbish out. The potential for people to pick up some seriously nasty bugs was just too high. The river hasn’t earned the nick name “The Dirty Irk” without good reason.
So instead we stuck to cleaning the river banks. As you can see from the picture above, we found all the usual suspects which seem to inhabit our urban rivers. Bike wheels, plastic patio chairs, umbrellas, shopping trolleys, and of course an inner city specialty in the plastic coating from stripped copper cables.
A good mornings work, cleaning 3 sections of river bank between Sainsburys and the BT Cable Yard in Blackley.
As you can see from the pic below, the Irk also treated the two volunteers who did venture into the river with a foamy bath, courtesy of the run off from the car wash at the local Sainsburys, and the truck was slightly upstream of the m60 motorway both of which run off directly into the river.
The shopping trolley at the front of the pic was removed, but you can see the permanent foam lane on the far bank which isn’t visible in the river, upstream of the two offending locations.
Hopefully with a little council co-operation we will be able to get these two sources of pollution dealt with.
Our next clean up event will be held in Ashton U Lyne on the River Tame. 10.30am start on the 29th Nov. Meet outside the Station Hotel.
This will be the last event of the year – and our clean up events will re-commence in Spring 2016
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