Local Residents, Businesses and Non-Profits come together to clean the town’s waterfront.
Photos courtesy Chris Lehto
Saturday, September 21 – Occoquan, Virginia
Starting at 9 a.m. Saturday morning, the Town of Occoquan held it’s first Riverfront Rehabilitation Projects Day. Residents, businesses, and nonprofits came together to improve the condition of the town’s waterfront. Prince William Trails and Streams Coalition (PWTSC) met at the riverfront behind the Occoquan Historical Society’s Mill House Museum, removing debris and trash, improving the path to the shoreline, and segregating mill ruins that the town plans to officially designate as an active archaeological site. Patriot Scuba, located at 305 Mill Street, sent scuba divers into the water to clean-up the riverfront below and along the waterline. In conjunction with that effort, shop staff provided family-friendly “Project Aware” information about underwater conservation. Vulcan Materials participated by having its staff remove debris from their dock complex on the Fairfax County side of the river.
Mayor Porta, who was involved from start to finish with the clean up was pleased. “The project yielded rewarding results that were entirely different from those expected. Clean-up efforts behind the Mill House Museum, for example, revealed features of the Mill ruins that will make our future archaeological work on the site more interesting than anticipated. Additionally, the divers from Patriot Scuba pulled not just trash, but diverse items from the river bottom near the town docks. Perhaps most unexpected and rewarding was that in addition to the folks from the Prince William Trails and Streams Coalition, Patriot Scuba, and Vulcan Materials — who were collaborators on the project — I met some new volunteers who came specifically for this effort.”
