MWCD lake cleanup efforts

The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District has been taking advantage of winter drawdowns and shoreline erosion control projects to do some cleanup of debris at the various lakes. It's sad to see how much trash winds up in our lakes and streams, but it's especially depressing to see how much come from fishermen, who should be guardians of natural areas, not despoilers.
I'm talking, of course, about the amount of fishing line collected from lakes. It's inevitable that small amounts of line will wind up in lakes from anglers, mostly because of line broken off on snags but how many times have you hooked onto large clumps of discarded line, or seen yards of it draped in trees along the shore?
If you have to remove a lot of line from a reel, for whatever reason, don't dump it in the lake, take it home with you and dispose of it with your other trash or, better yet, deposit it in one of the line recycling bins you can sometimes find at bait shops or tackle stores:
Anyway, here's the news release MWCD put put out about the cleanup efforts.
More than 1,000 old tires and 20 dumpsters full of trash have been removed over the past few weeks from the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) reservoirs.
Staff members from the MWCD have been removing tires and other trash and debris from inside the reservoirs and along the shorelines at Atwood, Clendening, Charles Mill, Leesville, Piedmont, Pleasant Hill, Seneca, Tappan and Wills Creek reservoirs.
The MWCD has partnered with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) for the removal of the tires for recycling. John Bird, MWCD’s lake ranger supervisor who oversaw the work, said that the winter months offer the ideal setting for the cleanup projects since the lake levels have been reduced as usual.
“This was a complete team effort with MWCD staff members from our parks and other facilities working together to remove the old tires and the trash,” Bird said. “Tires in the lakes that we find usually have either been discarded illegally or were part of old boat docks that fell into disrepair or were abandoned.”
Some of the items removed from the reservoirs and around the shorelines include:
* Metal posts, pipe, wheel rims and other discarded metals that will be recycled.
* Car seats, chairs, household furniture, televisions, bed mattresses and plastic drums.
* Old tools
* A car engine
* Thousands of feet of discarded monofilament fishing line (this can be extremely harmful to fish, waterfowl and other wildlife, as well as presenting problems for boats when caught around propellers).
Bird said that the work also has helped MWCD staff members identify areas where dumping occurred that now will be gated off for more limited access for such illegal activities.
The work is part of a busy winter for the MWCD, which also has been working on shoreline stabilization and erosion control projects at numerous reservoirs
For more information about the MWCD, visit www.mwcd.org.