April 22, 2023—Thank you Earth Day volunteers! We celebrated Earth Day in Marianna with clean ups at the Magnolia Bridge boat ramp, Spring Creek launch area and the Yancey Bridge boat ramp. Join me in a special thanks to the contagious enthusiasm of a group of young adults. 
At Magnolia Bridge, our first stop, Autumn Futch, a Chipley High School student arrived with 5 friends, Christien Cain (Holmes County High School), Alitzel Sapp (Chipley HS), Cassie Hildebrand (Chipley HS), Christian Hildebrand (Chipley HS) and Hadid Sapp (a Chipley HS graduate). They were a “strike team,” fanning out across the area and wasting no time filling up trash bags. When David Hilton, Marianna resident and board president, asked a few of the students how they heard about the Earth Day clean up, each responded in a version of, “Autumn told me about it and made me come.” This made us all grin. And we thanked Autumn. She later commented, “We all had so much fun helping!! Taking care of the environment is very important to me.” We also met Marianna resident Danny Melvin, who was out on the Chipola River with a boating friends also cleaning up on Earth Day.
Shortly after arriving at the Yancey boat ramp, our third stop that morning with volunteers, I was cheerfully cautioned by a little boy (about 5 years old) to watch out for some broken class he saw during their family’s clean up at the ramp. He also informed me that his mom was taking him and his little sister (about 3 years old) to the playground because it was Earth Day and they had already picked up litter all around the boat ramp before we got there. Indeed, they had! His mom and sister sunnily corroborated the story adding they got an early start to beat the heat. Thanking the family, our volunteers group headed a little further into the woods at Yancey, dodging poison ivy, to pick up litter. We all agreed it was a beautiful day to take care of the Chipola River Basin. Here are some photos.
To learn more about Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s Clean Up, visit Clean Ups.
Georgia Ackerman is Executive Director at Apalachicola Riverkeeper. She’s proud of some of the ” repurposed treasures” she has found on area clean up’s, especially a collection of beach toys, sunglasses and quality insulated mugs.