Bring Back the Crying Indian! – Mamaroneck River “floatables” – Saxon Woods Park

Plastic Bottles on shore of Mamaroneck River, NY - 10.5.11

I took a hike along the newly cleared floodplain of the Mamaroneck River this week – hurricane Irene and the subsequent storms really re-oriented the latticework of stream courses. Interesting to see how an urban stream can move sediment around. New piles of sand on the banks, all the invasive porcelainberry knocked back and moved out (at least until next spring). If I had a little WW kayak I’d poke around here – it’s the biggest “river” close to my home and seems to have enough flow to struggle downstream past shallow spots in a plastic boat.

But what really got me was the piles of plastic bottles everywhere – “floatables” in the parlance of stormwater engineers. I’m amazed how so many people just throw trash on the sidewalks these days, 40+ years after the first Earth Day. It all gets washed down the stormdrains and ends up on our stream shores and coastal shores. I’ve been to areas by the mouth of the Hutchinson River that have layers of plastic bottles several feet thick – the streambank stratification that forms by the accretion of sediment is now using plastic refuse to “build” the streambank! Pretty sickening.

Mamaroneck River Floodplain 10.5.11

 
 
 
 
At these times I just wonder whatever happened to the old “Keep American Beautiful” commercial that had the Crying Indian riding his horse and seeing people throw trash along the highway and paddling his canoe and looking at all the riverbank garbage. As a child, I know this had a profound affect on me and many of my peers. It enlightened us, shamed us, and stopped us from becoming litterers ourselves. In my opinion, if you show these things to kids when they’re young, it can make a real, lifelong difference in their behavior. How many thousands/millions of American kids saw that commercial and came to learn that littering is bad? Think of how much littering was prevented by the commercial in shear tons of garbage. And just think how inexpensive that ad was considering the many people it affected – probably the single most cost-effective anti-pollution measure of all time.

But they no longer show the commercial on TV and haven’t replaced it with something similar - now several generations of kids have grown up without the shame they should feel in littering. Not long ago a young man pulled up at a red light in front of me, opened his car door, placed his soda can on the ground carefully, then sped away at the green light leaving his empty can upright in the middle of the road! In the parking lot next to my apartment I witnessed another young guy dumping the contents of several fast food runs from his car onto the ground and he was within 20 feet of a garbage can!!

Bring back the Crying Indian before it’s too late – we need him again.