Volunteers clean Portneuf River channel

Volunteers from Idaho State University and the surrounding community cleaned up the Portnuef River over the weekend.

The Clean the Portneuf 2014 event was held Saturday. Volunteers from ISU Stream Ecology Center, the City of Pocatello, Portneuf Watershed Partnership, and Valley Pride members joined citizens and Boy Scouts to remove piles of debris and trash from the river channel.

According to a news release from the university, some of that trash included “a flat-screen TV, bike, scooter, basketball hoop, car battery, miscellaneous other car parts, lots of metal, two soaked pillows, a mattress and some things too sordid to mention.”

“We had an awesome community cleanup … with dozens of volunteers from those into their 80s down to infants, and we had folks floating the river,” said event organizer Hannah Sanger, who is also the science and environmental division manager for the City of Pocatello. “We filled six Dumpsters of trash, so that is awesome.”

“This (event) was absolutely necessary based on the amount of crap we pulled out of the channel, and it has just been one year,” said Danelle Larson, a post-doctoral researcher in the Stream Ecology Center.

At the end of the cleanup, many of the volunteers were hosed down to remove “a little of the river’s less clean aspects.”