It was a banner year for Save the Great South Bay’s (SGSB) volunteers chock full of brawn, babies and bandits. The brawn started with our very first volunteer from Suffolk’s Finest, the Suffolk Police Department, who pitched in in uniform on his way home from work. SGSB’s other brawny volunteers hauled 7000 pounds (Note – Robyn, Please insert the correct number from Janet. Then increase that # by 30% because we did not log in all trash) of debris from creeks. We also had our first baby! Eager to show her kids what good stewardship looks like, one volunteer performed a cleanup with her little helper in tow, a baby in a papoose! We even had some bandits! But not the kind you’re thinking about, like the McDonald’s Hamburglar. SGSB partnered with the Town of Babylon to install Bandalong Bandit litter traps. They’re huge devices that capture thousands of pounds of litter from stormwater runoff before it reaches the Bay. Oh yes! The brawn, babies and bandits this spring made it a banner year indeed!
By the numbers, and to the tune of a Johnny Cash song, we’ve been everywhere, man. We went there to clean our creeks. Why? The core belief of SGSB is that the land is sick, the Bay is but a symptom. SGSB’s Creek Defenders clean our creeks to prevent all that garbage from reaching the bay. We’ve never run clean-ups in so many communities. Johnny Cash went to Reno, Chicago, Fargo and Minnesota. We cleaned up in Massapequa, Lindenhurst, Babylon and West Islip. Cash was in Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow and Sarasota. SGSB was in Bayshore, Islip, Great River, and Oakdale. Cash was also in Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa and Oklahoma. We were in Sayville, Bayport, Blue Point and Patchogue. We even had clean-ups in East Patchogue and partnered with CEED at a clean-up in Brookhaven, man! We really were everywhere, man, everywhere on the south shore along the Bay, that is.
To coin another song, this one to the Mighty Mighty cheer you hear at school games, we are Defenders. Mighty Creek Defenders. Everywhere we go. We help the people know. Who we are. Yes we tell them. We’re the Creek Defenders. Mighty Creek Defenders. What we mean by this is that Save the Great South Bay did a huge push to recruit local stewards. Such lead stewards are called Creek Defenders.
Creek Defenders are volunteers who step up to organize and lead cleanups in their hometown. For the first time, just about every south shore community now has a Creek Defender (We still need one in East Islip). Start where you stand, we also like to say within SGSB. We all love the Bay. But Creek Defenders, because they clean the creeks in their hometown, have a special appreciation for their local waterways. This passion is felt in the hard work they do scouting a clean-up location, picking a date, inviting local community groups and making sure everyone feels good and enjoys themselves pitching in to clean bay.
Boy did new leaders emerge! We recruited new Creek Defenders in Massapequa (Donald Nedbalsky), Great River (Ron Gibbons), South Oakdale (John Bernsten and Courtney Lyons), Patchogue (Jennifer George and Brian Pendergast) and East Patchogue (Jeff Berthold and Joe Werkmeister). They joined the team who’s been leading clean-ups over the past five years, like Brad Shaw, Ed Ragan, Janet Soley and many, many others. All lead outstanding clean-ups in their communities. Local leadership is everything to us in Save the Great South Bay.
Also by the numbers, and the first one is everything to us, we hosted nearly 700 volunteers at our spring clean-ups. We averaged 40 volunteers in each of the 17 clean-ups we ran. There’s always room under our tent. Nothing better illustrates that than the 12 clean-ups we collaborated with other organizations on. Partners included the Town and Village of Babylon, the Center for Environmental Education and Discovery (CEED), Massapequa Takes Action Coalition, the Village of Patchogue and countless others. We even got support from The Dive Club and the Long Island Divers Association!
The media did some stepping up on their own! Newsday printed a great feature listing the dates of our clean-ups at the start of the season. The award for best coverage continues to go to our local papers, proving once again that home really is where the heart is. (Note: Robyn: Please add and blend in the name of the Babylon set of papers (i.e. Massapequa, etc.) with a new sentence. The consistent support of the Long Island Advance (and sister papers the Islip Bulletin and the Suffolk County News) and its editor, Ms. Nicole Fuentes, was especially helpful to getting the word out.
Greater Patchogue showed up huge for Save the Great South Bay. Babylon and Sayville had been the twin poles of SGSB activity for the last seven years. The youth and strong civic fabric of Greater Patchogue rose up to become another locus of activity this spring. When it comes to saving the Bay, SGSB very much believes that a rising tide lifts all ships! Evidence of Greater Patchogue’s emergence is that we got back to our roots with a Spring kick off at the home of our very first corporate sponsor, Blue Point Brewery. Meanwhile, Patchogue Village provided an education in how to use nature to protect our community. They made our coastline more robust by creating the Great South Bay’s very first living shoreline. The huge clean-ups lead by Patchogue and East Patchogue’s Creek Defenders were the icing on the cake, cementing Patchogue’s status as our third pole.
All told, this spring was like no other! All of the leaders, governments, volunteers, newspapers and especially volunteers who participated in Great South Bay’s clean-ups have made one thing very clear. Together We Can and We Will save the Great South Bay!