A quarter of a century ago, a WCU staff member and two students in the outdoor recreation program sat down together to plan programs for the semester. One of the proposals was picking up trash in the Tuckaseigee River. “We came up with the idea of cleaning the river because this was before the recycling days,” said Tim Jacobs ’71 MAEd ’75 MA ’99, former director of WCU’s A.K. Hinds University Center. “The river was a dumping ground, and we used it all the time for recreation.”
Mark Melrose ’85 of the Sylva law firm Melrose, Seago and Lay P.A. was one of the two students in that planning session, and participated in the first cleanup. “When I was a student picking up garbage on the side of the river I had no idea that someday it would become such a large event and I would be a corporate sponsor,” said Melrose
The event, which attracts more than 600 volunteers annually, began as a small, casual gathering. “About 50 or 60 people showed up for the first one. We all pitched in together to find canoes, and the State Department of Transportation gave us some trash bags,” said Jacobs. “We didn’t make it a third of the way down the river before we were out of bags. This made us realize that we needed the event to be bigger.”
The Tuckaseigee River Cleanup began to grow rather quickly, and it became a good deal more difficult to manage, Jacobs said. “The event started to snowball, and there was so much support that we had to expand to additional stretches of the river,” he said. “The Nanatahala Outdoor Center and Tuckaseegee Outfitters started helping us with rafts. WCU food services started helping us by supplying food. Students got area businesses to donate door prizes, and that was a nice draw.”
Jacobs attributes the rapid growth of the cleanup to the collaborative effort between the students and the community. “As tourism continued to grow in the area, so did the Tuckaseigee Cleanup as everyone realized the value of cleaning the river,” said Jacobs. “The county would donate containers to haul off the trash and DOT helped with picking up the trash. It just got bigger and bigger every year.”
The event has grown so large that it ranks among the biggest endeavors of its kind. “The Tuckaseigee River Cleanup is the largest single-day river cleanup project in the nation,” said Mark Singleton of American Whitewater, a national nonprofit organization that represents whitewater enthusiasts, river conservationists and paddling clubs across America.
Although there is plenty of help these days, Melrose still recalls how overwhelming the cleanup was in the beginning. “It was amazing the amount of trash there was in the river at that time, including a lot of very large items, such as cars and refrigerators,” said Melrose. “Twenty-five years ago, we made a small dent in a big problem. Over the years, we have made a big dent in what is now a much smaller problem. It has been very rewarding.”