By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor
Tuesday’s Cumberland River cleanup in Barbourville was part volunteer work, part class assignment.
Members of Union College’s UC Outdoors club, and students in the school’s outdoor recreation advanced programing class, collected trash along the riverbank near Thompson Park.
For programing class students, the assignment was to organize a cleanup. For UC Outdoors members, it was a chance to keep their recreation spot clean.
“We actually used the Cumberland River about three weeks ago to do a canoe race, so we use the area a lot, so we kind of feel it’s important to actually go back and clean up the area that we’re using,” said Union junior and president of UC Outdoors Sean Trinque.
Twelve volunteers, including Barbourville Mayor David Thompson and his wife, PRIDE Coordinator Wendy Thompson, walked the muddy river banks to collect trash left by park visitors and trash swept downstream.
Before heading out to the river, Mayor Thompson warned the college students about potentially dangerous trash.
“We found probably four needles on Blue Gable Straight (during a cleanup in Heidrick), hypodermics, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find them on a riverbank either,” he warned.
He also told them to avoid touching suspected meth labs — they’ll look like “watered-down Big Red” in a soda bottle, and often have tubing jutting from the bottle’s top.
The warnings are a sad reality in Southeastern Kentucky, but they did not deter the UC students.
“UC Outdoors is a wilderness club on campus,” Trinque said. “We do a lot of adventure racing, adventure activities, and we also do a lot of environmental cleanups. We’re pretty much an all-around environmental club.
“It’s good to help out the area that we’re at, the area where we’re living, to contribute something back to the area that’s actually educating us,” he added.
