MEADVILLE — Riley Sandrock wasn’t keen on cleaning up someone else’s mess at first — especially not knowing what kind of mess she may find.

“It got more fun as the day went on,” said Sandrock, 13, a seventh-grade student at Meadville Middle School. “I got to go into the water.”

Sandrock and her friend, Alayna Hall, 12, were among more than 600 people Saturday who volunteered to help the French Creek Valley Conservancy clean up French Creek in areas between Waterford and Utica.

Volunteers removed 23,500 pounds — 11.75 tons — of junk, according to Jim Lang, president of the French Creek Valley Conservancy, sponsor of the third annual fall cleanup of the creek.

The girls were part of a cleaning crew in the Meadville area. The crew Sandrock and Hall were on found such diverse items as a clothes dryer, a pitchfork — and even a fish tank.

They weren’t the only ones having fun, though.

“Nothing beats a chance to play in the creek,” said Karen Schreiber, a seventh grade English teacher at Meadville Middle School. “This is great because it gets students, parents, teachers and administrators to participate and the kids see the adults in real world roles.”

“It a good way to serve others and have some fun,” said Tom Lynskey, an Allegheny College junior who was helping to clear the creek near Meadville’s Kenneth A. Beers Jr. Bicentennial Park on Mead Avenue. Lynskey was part of a crew from college’s chapter of Phi Kappa Psi social fraternity.

The volunteers’ comments were music to Lang’s ears.

In 2010, about 240 volunteers removed 17,100 pounds of junk from what’s considered one of most biologically diverse waterways east of the Mississippi River. In 2009, 142 volunteers pulled 10,350 pounds of thrown away items from the creek.

“We have a growing number of pounds, but we have a growing number of people going to get it,” Lang said. “It also helps that it’s a competition.”

This is the third year the cleanup has been a competition, helping attract volunteers from schools and colleges, non-profit and civic groups and more.

Weigh-ins of debris and a picnic for those who volunteered followed Saturday afternoon at the Sprague Farm and Brew Works near Venango.

Meadville Middle School earned the cleanup’s annual cash prize of $1,000 for its local science program by having the most participants with 80 kids and adults while $500 went to French Creek Community Theatre as the civic organization with the most participants at 70, Lang said.

Lang said there also were a few special awards this year, too.

Saegertown High School Flotilla got a $50 prize for having two persons age 80 or older participating. Stony Crick got a $50 prize for collecting the most unusual junk item — a troll doll.

Team Fun of Cambridge Springs earned a $25 prize for the most unusual with two concrete blocks, Lang said.

The blocks weren’t unusual in themselves, but in their perceived value to two different groups, according to Lang.

Team Fun members found the blocks in the creek near Cambridge Springs Volunteer Fire Department and wanted them for their weight for possible prize money, Lang said. A department member asked the team for them for the department’s own use.

The blocks were given up on one condition — a letter from the fire department on its letterhead stating where they were found and weight, Lang said. That lead to a letter being drafted and given to the judges, he said with a laugh.

The inaugural corporate award, sponsored by the Lang family’s Meadville-based company, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, went to Ainsworth for pulling the most pounds of junk out of French Creek.

The Ainsworth team pulled 1,236 pounds to win “The Coveted Traveling Hellbender Trophy,” a 22-inch, bronze-cast rendering of the hellbender salamander that’s common to the waterway.



Keith Gushard can be reached at 724-6370 or by email at kgushard@meadvilletribune.com.



Number of registered volunteers

142 in 2009

240 in 2010

603 in 2011

Number of pounds of junk removed from French Creek

10,350 pounds in 2009

17,100 pounds in 2010

23,500 pounds in 2011





Did you know?

French Creek extends for a length of 117 miles in a watershed area that includes parts of Erie, Crawford, Venango and Mercer counties as well as New York’s Chautauqua County before it joins the Allegheny River near Franklin. The creek provides life-sustaining habitat to more than 80 species of fish and 26 species of freshwater mussels, according to regional waterways experts.