Bill Arp area residents will wade into Dog River and Flyblow creek as part of the continuing statewide campaign to clean and preserve over 70,000 miles of Georgia’s rivers and streams. The effort will be part of Rivers Alive, a joint program of the Environmental Protection Division’s Adopt-A-Stream Program and the Department of Community Affairs’ Keep Georgia Beautiful Program.

The tenth annual Georgia Waterway Cleanup is expected to once again be the largest single volunteer effort to beautify Georgia’s water resources.

Volunteers in Boy Scouts of America Troop 900 will stage their cleanup at the River Walk community just south of Dog River on Hwy. 5 October 4 from 8 a.m.-1 p.m. at the River Walk Swim and Tennis parking lot. They will join an estimated 30,000 other volunteers statewide participating in the annual river cleanup. This fall over 150 other cleanups will collect trash and similar debris in streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands and the ocean from Lake Allatoona in North Georgia to the Ochlockonee River in the South.

“We are excited to be a part of this statewide effort to clean our waterways and to focus attention on our valuable water resources said James Hembree, assistant Scoutmaster, Troop 900. In addition to BSA Troop 900 which is chartered at Dorsett Shoals Baptist Church in the Bill Arp community, the cleanup at Dog River will be sponsored by WSA, D.C Parks and Rec, River Walk Community, and Publix Hwy 5.

During the 2007 river cleanup 25,028 volunteers cleaned over 2,310 miles of waterways and removed over 748,306 pounds of trash and garbage including tires, shingles, balls and washing machines from Georgia’s waterways, according to Harold Harbert, Outreach Coordinator with the Environmental Protection Division. Harbert expects Rivers Alive 2008 to involve thousands more volunteers and to continue to be the state’s and one of the South’s largest volunteer efforts to beautify water resources.

Ten sponsors support this event: Georgia Power, Coca-Cola, Oglethorpe Power, Balch & Bingham LLP, Environmental Planning Specialists, Inc., Jones Day, Kodak, MeadWestvaco, the Ocean Conservancy, and Sutherland.

Other supporters of the statewide campaign include: Georgia Adopt-A-Stream, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division, Keep Georgia Beautiful and Affiliates, Georgia Department of Community Affairs, Georgia Project WET/River of Words, Cobb County Water, CH2M Hill, Dalton Utilities, Georgia Ports Authority, MEAG Power, North Georgia Label, Warnell Graduate Student Association, and dozens of other local organizations will be sponsoring individual cleanups around the state.

To volunteer for the Dog River cleanup, contact James Hembree at 770-843-6215. For more information about efforts in other areas or the statewide campaign, call (404)675-6240 or go to www.riversalive.org.