NEOCHMM

PARMA, OH--On Saturday May 8, 2010, NEOCHMM again assisted the West Creek Preservation Committee as part of River Sweep 2010.  River Sweep is an annual event held by the Ohio Canal Corridor as a coordinated cleanup and beautification project at 11 locations in the Cuyahoga River Watershed.

Because our group can operate independently , we were requested to  clean up a conservation easement in Parma, called Dolan Block D.  This is a undulating, wooded area, containing a small creek and wetlands , surrounded by houses.  It drains to the head waters of West Creek, where NEOCHMM did some cleanup work in 2007 and 2008.  This is our fourth consecutive year of public service on River Sweep. We once again received a small matching grant from the ACHMMunity program for this work.

This year, a few dedicated NEOCHMM members felt like we were cast in the movie, "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  That's because the night before, the area experienced a tornado watch, severe thunderstorms, hall, heavy rain and localized flooding.  Derek Schaffer, our contact at the WCPC, was called in to work and actually had two cars damaged by hail, one of which was only two weeks old.  Two NEOCHMM members, Han Maung and Scott Williams, could not attend due to unexpected trips to the hospital.

At the start of the work, we had to slog through some swampy areas  inundated by rain.  After searching the site and doing some general cleanup,  we came upon the "ark." That is, In the central portion of the site, we found enough lumber and old plywood to actually build a small ark.  In many cases, we had to use 4 people, one on each corner, to carry out large panels of plywood, over the creek, up the hill while slipping on wet clay, through the swamp and to the curb, for collection by City of Parma workers.  Fortunately, Pat Manchen, wife of Ken Manchen, was around to coordinate debris pick-up with the City, answer numerous questions from neighbors, take photographs and administer refreshments.

After several trips of huffing and puffing,  one down pour and high wind warnings, we filled one dump truck with debris. We then concluded that much of the plywood was not from an ark, but from kids building and then abandoning "Fort Dolan."  Suddenly, many stories came forth about fort building when we all were kids.   With a chuckle, we suddenly realized that we were paying for it now.  Herb Mausser did find one small toy shopping cart by the old fort, that kept his string of cart discoveries intact.  Kelly  Cernenec  recruited "soccer dad" Ken Manchen to help her remove and carry one scrap tire full of mud and water through the woods and to the curb. (This role would have normally been filled by soccer mom attaché',  Ken Doyle, but alas, he bailed on us, too.)

After accumulating enough debris to fill a second truck, the City of Parma called and said they were pulled away on emergency tree clean-up duty after the storm and they could not pick-up the second load of debris.  Rather than make Mark Baumgardner a liar, when he assured the neighbors that all the debris would be gone from the tree lawn by noon, Josh Gaub volunteered the use of his pick-up truck.  We then piled the debris into the pick-up truck and took them to the Parma Service Center, for off loading into a dumpster.

Thus, in spite of all this bad karma, another project was successfully completed by NEOCHMM.  However, we saw more debris on the site that can be picked-up by Maung, Williams, Doyle and Schaffer  et. al., during the sequel, next year.....