Sturgeon seeing less trash

The amount of shopping carts, bikes and other garbage landing in the Sturgeon River seems to be on the decline.

Public works crews went through the river last month looking for things that did not belong and found one shopping cart and one bike beneath the water. That is a steep decline from previous years; in 2008, when the city began keeping track, there were 36 carts in the river, followed by 38 in 2009 along with 15 bikes.

In 2010, the number started to slide, with 13 shopping carts finding their way into the drink and five bikes before this year’s better numbers.

Mayor Nolan Crouse said the numbers help the city keep an eye on the problem and can now see a positive trend.

“They started collecting the data four years ago as part of the river cleanup and it was just trying to get a handle on how significant our river problem was,” the mayor said.

Crouse said a big part in reducing the number of waterlogged carts was reducing the available carts to get a hold of. He said the city worked with St. Albert Centre and Zellers and encouraged them to switch to coin-operated carts, which tend to stay closer to the store.

“One of the things that I worked with the mall on, because of the number of shopping carts we get, was to see if we could get locked shopping carts,” he said. “That is the biggest single change there.”

Glenn Tompolski, the city’s director of public works, said he has also been impressed by the improving numbers.

He said crews go into the river once annually — doing so once doesn’t poses a risk to marine life — and do a clean sweep of the river.

“After June 30, we can start going in without affecting or disturbing any aquatic life,” Tompolski said.

He said if workers or residents spot anything else later in the year, they will return.

Numbers from the city’s annual Clean Up the Sturgeon event up are also showing some promise.

Erin Gluck, the city’s community recreation co-ordinator, said they attracted 475 people down to the event this year who swept the banks looking for trash.

In both 2008 and 2009, the city collected 700 kilograms of trash, but in 2011, the number rose to slightly more than a metric tonne.

Gluck said, at first glance, that number seems discouraging, but volunteers covered a much larger area of the river this year and went beyond into other city parks and green areas.

“With a hundred more people, we also covered a lot more areas,” she said.

A report released in June and compiled by a group from NAIT did find some worrying trends about the river, showing it has too little oxygen and too much phosphorous to support healthy marine life.

A draft version of the city’s own State of the Sturgeon report has been completed and the final report is expected to be released later this year.