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Earth Day is Tuesday April 22, 2025.
CELINA - Whether on designated days, weekends or throughout the entire year, area volunteers and organizations engaged in environmental stewardship take great pride in keeping up the appearance of and removing litter along state, county and township roads and within the Grand Lake St. Marys State Park.
Today marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, an annual occurrence ushered in by the power of 20 million voices that came out on the streets for the first event, which led the U.S. to create the EPA and the first generation of environmental laws addressing clean air, clean water and toxics, according to Susan Bass, vice president of earthday.org.
Under the banner of, "Our Power. Our Planet," earthday.org, the global organizer of Earth Day, is calling on people from all walks of life to join in "Earth Action Day" - an effort to once again mobilize people power to tackle the current generation of environmental crises, Bass wrote in an op-ed.
An American while Pelican consumes a fish on Grand Lake.
For decades, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources's Grand Lake St. Marys Park has hosted the Lake Cleanup Day, which in recent years has been heavily supported by the Lake Improvement Association. The event typically coincides with Earth Day.
A strong storm system barreled through the area on Saturday morning, creating unfavorable circumstances for this year's Lake Cleanup Day.
Nevertheless, a little more than a dozen volunteers - equipped with garbage bags and gloves provided by state park personnel at East Bank in St. Marys, West Bank in Celina and Windy Point in Montezuma - rid the lake area of some of its bottles, cans, junk and other debris that are unsightly and pose a risk to wildlife.
Among the organizations that pitched in were LIA and the St. Marys Rotary Club, according to LIA President Brian Morris.
"The opportunity for people to get out there and help pick up trash before we mow is a huge benefit to us," said state park director Dave Faler of the importance of Lake Cleanup Day.
Due to the event occurring during Holy Week and the morning storm, turnout was obviously down, he added.
"Typically we have Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts groups out, and also the Wright State alumni tends to pick up (litter at) the northwest shore and West Bank area, and I'm not sure if they were out this year or not, but they typically do every year as well," Faler noted.
The Grand Lake St. Marys Restoration Commission plans to take to the lake on Saturday to remove refuse from the water that might have been carried by the wind or fallen off boats.
"It's been very, very windy the last few years for some reason," Faler said.
Volunteers, though, are welcome to tidy up the state parkland anytime during the year. For instance, Celina High School football players in 2019 left the gridiron behind on a gorgeous Saturday morning to help get the Celina Rotary Dog Park, a 3.7-acre fenced area at the state park off West Bank Road, in shape for the warmer weeks ahead.
Mercer County Juvenile Court's Ripple Project participants have mulched around the trees, laid down gravel and picked up sticks and debris from the dog park.
"People, they're encouraged to take care of their state parks. When I say their state parks, I truly mean we are all taxpayers, we all own this. It's all part of our lives. It's just a matter of how we use it and/or abuse it," Faler said.
In turn, Faler said the park's relatively small staff is freed up to spend more time completing park and boat ramp maintenance and other crucial work.
A rainbow in the Grand Lake area.
The Ohio Department of Transportation oversees the Adopt-a-Highway program in which crews, inmates and volunteer groups clean up roughly 400,000 bags of trash along highways throughout the state each year, ODOT spokesperson Loryn Bryson told The Daily Standard.
Nearly 30 organizations pick up litter at least four times a year on sections of state highways in Mercer and Auglaize counties, a list provided by Bryson shows. In fact, the Coldwater Knights of Columbus Squires was the first group to join ODOT's Adopt-A-Highway program, Bryson pointed out.
Janet Gels of Coldwater was involved in an area litter and recycling program before Adopt-A-Highway was instituted locally, she told the newspaper when interviewed in 2012.
"Back in 1989, Joe Howell was with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and was one of the instigators in getting the program started here," Gels recalled. "At that time, I was director of the Mercer County Litter Prevention and Recycling Program, and Howell came to me and asked if I knew of a group that would be interested in picking up litter along the highways."
She suggested the Coldwater Columbian Squires, a Knights of Columbus youth chapter then headed by her husband, Ralph Gels, who died Feb. 14, 2023. For its decades-long commitment to sprucing up a two-mile section of State Route 219, the Squires in 2004 earned ODOT's Gold Star Group status.
"We are always encouraging local volunteer groups to help with litter clean up," Bryson said. "Litter is an ongoing issue across the state, and we do our best to prevent it, but unfortunately we still have people who toss litter out of their vehicles or loads that aren't secure. Our crews do what they can to pick up litter, but that takes time away from other maintenance projects they could be working on. Volunteer groups are a great asset for us."
Mercer County Engineer Jim Wiechart's office and some of the county's 14 townships jointly fund the springtime Litter Pick-up Program that pays recognized civic and community groups to pick up litter in ditches along county roads.
The groups, each issued safety vests, gloves and bags courtesy of the Mercer County Solid Waste District and the Ohio EPA, earn $30 for every mile of county roadway cleaned.
"Roy Thompson started the program in 1999-2000 when he was the Mercer County Engineer. He was aware of the ODOT program and started the local program in conjunction with the solid wasted department, who was able to secure a grant opportunity for bags, vests, etc," Wiechart's office said in an email to the newspaper.
Under the program, roadsides are cleaned up before mowing begins.
"There are some townships that do not participate and there are some county roads that do not get picked up because there are not groups to pick up those areas," Wiechart's office said. "There is always room for more volunteers in those areas not currently served."
Without the program, the cleanup would not happen "due to our workforce having other work priorities required of them," the office noted.
A similar initiative is carried out in Darke County during the annual two-day Trash Bash. This year's Trash Bash that took place April 12-13 netted 6.49 tons of trash and 1.35 tons of recyclables, according to Darke County Solid Waste Management District Director Krista Unger.
"We've been doing this for 18 years," Unger said. "Whenever (volunteers) have time to do it over the weekend, dawn to dusk, we let them do it … and then we pick up the bags on Monday."
This year, 800 volunteers came out to gather up garbage and junk littering 515 miles of county and township roads.
"When we had COVID it (participation) really fell off, and now it's starting to get bigger again," she said.
For each two-mile section of roadway cleaned, nonprofit organizations earn $100.
"We have 4H groups, churches, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, all sorts of organizations, and (the proceeds) goes to their organizations," she said.
