Hanging Dog - While Saturday’s 23rd annual Big Sweep cleanup event on the waters of Lake Hiwassee looked a little different this year, the event was still a success, with about 4,000 pounds of trash being removed from the lake and its shores.
Boats of volunteers aiming to remove debris from the lowered-waters of the lake spread out across the shores, with each group having chosen or been assigned a certain section of the lake to clean.
While the event didn’t have any large crowds awaiting instructions before the event as per usual, Cherokee County native Sarah Posey-Davis, a land conservation manager for Mainspring Conservation Trust, said the organization was happy to be still be able to hold the event this year even with restrictions.
Posey-Davis credited a large part of this year’s Big Sweep’s success to the addition of a new staff member at Mainspring, conservation outreach associate Rachel Newcomb.
“I think it was a great success, and I can attribute that to luckily this year we were able to hire a new staff person. We’ve been pretty fortunate so thanks to our donors for keeping us afloat during COVID,” Posey-Davis said. “We were able to hire Rachel as our conservation outreach associate, so her entire job is about doing events, getting out in the public and building that base with community members.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic pushing people to spend more time outdoors, Posey-Davis said Mainspring has seen increased visitation to their public access properties this year.
“We have six public access properties, and we have seen more people using them this year, but luckily we haven’t had a problem with overuse at this point,” Posey-Davis said. “I think that if there is more trash, people are out seeing it – and if they’re going to be enjoying the outdoors more, they can try and help in that regard.”
The 23rd annual Big Sweep event also happened to fall on National Public Lands Day this year.
“I think so many people stay around here or move here because of all the public land,” Posey-Davis said. “Not everybody is going to be able to afford to have 100 acres to play on, and so public land allows everyone to have to opportunity to get outside.
“I’ve been thinking about how blessed we are to live out here during the pandemic because we’re not stuck in our apartments. We have enough public land that we’re able to get out and be separated.”