Rahway River Cleanup Set for Saturday

People looking for a productive way to commemorate Earth Day can help scoop bicycles and credit cards out of the Rahway River this weekend.

Main Street South Orange is conducting its annual river cleanup—where trash items including license plates, realtor signs, construction materials and cinder blocks have been retrieved in past years—on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Executive director Carole Anzalone-Newman said the project drew 75 to 100 volunteers last year with a large turnout by Seton Hall fraternities and sororities, and this year, there's a focus on getting local schoolchildren to participate. The idea for a pride campaign engaging children and their families was hatched at a Main Street meeting of local property owners earlier this year, where complaints about littering downtown surfaced.

The Main Street tent will be pitched by the river behind South Orange Middle School, but operations fan out in both directions—toward Maplewood and The Baird.

"The whole thrust of this is to make the river more accessible to people and more beautiful," Anzalone-Newman said.

This year, the cleanup is part of the state Department of Environmental Protection's Adopt-A-Beach program, and information on items removed from the river will be collected and forwarded to the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C.

Children 4 and up are welcomed as volunteers but must be accompanied by a parent. Participants should wear jeans, long-sleeved shirts, gloves and boots; waders are recommended for people who plan to get into the river. It's recommended that participants bring a five-gallon bucket with a handle with their name on the bottom in order to haul junk out of the river and transfer it to large garbage bags.