Litter Committee Minutes
January 7, 2004

We adopted the following Friends of Sligo Creek litter policy.

Much of the Park’s litter troubles are due to people who deposit their litter in the Park: motorists, picnickers, users of ball fields, some walkers. A second major source is street trash that empties into stormwater drains. Until this stops we will always have problems. The best way to address litter is for the M-NCPPC to initiate a professionally run campaign against litter and trash.

Until littering is stopped, someone has to pick it up. Volunteers do much of this. Ideally they should not be needed at all, and certainly they should not have to carry it home with them. The Park needs to decide how and where volunteers can place litter so it will be picked up.

  • We also agreed that the Litter Committee should prepare an electronic notice to civic association presidents for their list serves. Subject: what we recommend about trash – call the Park when you see a lot of it. So far we have no one to do this, but Ed and I will be glad to help.
  • Coming up in April: The 16th Annual Alice Ferguson Potomac Watershed Clean-up. We participated last year, cleaning up below New Hampshire (about 2,000 pounds of trash!). This year we hope all the stewards would like to host a clean up in their section on April 3rd. The Litter Committee would provide support to the stewards. The Alice Ferguson Foundation will provide additional support, including adding Sligo Creek clean up sites to their Potomac Clean-up website, so outsiders know the nearest place where they can go.

We need one or two people to help organize the Potomac Clean up event in Sligo Creek. There isn’t much to do except send to Ferguson the sites where stewards will receive volunteers, and make probably 3-6 phone calls all told. Ed and I will pass on our experience from last year, and help in any way needed.

  • Update on Kemp Mill Shopping Plaza: A fence between parking lot and Park, proposed some time ago, would help some, but wouldn’t stop the problem of trash entirely (a lot of the trash also comes from the stormwater run-off from the parking lot). Giant may close, altering the situation. The Department of Public Works was called about this problem last spring. We suggested to them that a fence should be installed. They came out to the shopping center and issued a notice of violation about the dumpsters only.
  • We need a suggestion on how bottles and cans in the park could be recycled.

We need a Litter Committee Coordinator!
No one has appeared to chair our Litter Committee, though many of you have expressed concern about the Park policy. We need someone to describe our viewpoint in a letter to the Gazette, and someone else to write a message for civic associations to distribute, stating what people can do. We need a third person to call the next meeting, and possibly a fourth will take notes. See? It’s not so bad when you break up the work, but it won’t get done unless members volunteer!

Sally Gagne