LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Volunteers from Ford in Louisville — and other plants — loaded onto the Living Lands and Waters barge at a stop in Louisville. Clicking on their orange life vests, the motor company employees felt like they had a day off ahead even with the muddy work planned.
They ventured upstream from the city, familiar landmarks like the water tower drifting by as the sun sparkled along the brown Ohio River. It's one of several American waterways worked by the barge crew. Chad Pregracke's counted over 1400 clean ups during his decades roaming rivers.
"But mainly we work a lot on the Ohio River," he said, "because it's where there's a big need."
The ride to Six Mile Island, a nature preserve on the river in Jefferson County, put Stephanie "Bubbles" Collins in the right mind to pay mother nature back.
"Serenity," she described the feeling. "I felt like mother nature was present," she adding, bubbling with laughter as a second, lighter boat brought her to shore.
Marcus Sheckles visited for the first time too. He's vice president for UAW Local 862, now with a fresh perspective on the massive amounts of river trash that washes ashore.
"When you get down, down and dirty, you see how much really you got," he said, catching a traffic cone union boss Todd Dunn tossed up to Sheckles. "That's the bad part," he reflected, dusting his hands clean.
The good part — Ford's new partnership with a local, tree-planting non-profit, TreesLouisville, granting the organization $150,000 for new equipment.
Director Cindi Sullivan explained a healthy canopy helps prevent the runoff that ends up littering the shore.
"So it's a mutually beneficial relationship, land and water," she said, feeling the same about the partnership: that companies should pitch in when they can.
"It's heartwarming and also discouraging at the same time," Dunn said, throwing bags of trash into one of the boats he rode in on. "But we'll keep fighting,"
This fight for the environment anyone can pitch in on, even without the boat.
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