Garbage runs through it: 30 years of cleaning the Seine

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This article was published 22/06/2024 (506 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dragonflies dart by as canoeists make a splash hauling out algae-covered garbage from the Seine River.

A rusted-out stove and gnarled steel jut out of the riverbank.

Save Our Seine, an environmental advocacy organization, is celebrating 30 years of its summer river keeper team, which picks up litter around Winnipeg’s third-largest river.

Co-ordinator Monique Ellison is starting her second year with the team. She and three other river keepers get into a canoe and paddle up and down the Seine clearing brush, picking up trash and monitoring invasive species.

“It’s just a very special place. The amount of wildlife you get to see is beautiful. I hold the Seine River pretty near and dear to my heart,” said Ellison on Friday.

The team has pulled out everything from shopping carts to bunches of coconuts. Ellison’s next task is pulling out an old mattress that’s too big for the canoe.

The crew spends up to six hours a day in the canoe. Because the water level is so low, canoeing is the best way to travel without getting stuck in the mud.

Ellison is happy to see more community members taking the initiative to clean the river when they paddle by. Since she has worked for the team, she’s felt her love for the river grow.

“Lots of people don’t even know that the Seine River exists and how navigable it is by canoe and it’s right here in the heart of the city,” said Ellison. “There are so many different canoe launches, and it’s just like a great way to get outdoors.”

In 1990, a group of residents on Egerton Road, next to the river, organized a meeting to talk about the state of the Seine and planned a community cleanup, said Ryan Palmquist, executive director of Save Our Seine.

It was the start of their efforts to maintain and rehabilitate the river.

“The condition of the river was so bad. There were entire vehicles in the river and industrial pollution was particularly bad,” said Palmquist, while standing on the riverbank Friday.

Palmquist said the provincial Green Team grant program led to the formation of the summer river keeper team because it pays for the hiring of four or five people every year.

“We aren’t cleaning up years or even decades’ worth of trash anymore, like they (previous teams) were at the beginning. We’re cleaning up just what accumulated since the summer team ended last year in August,” he said.

Palmquist said the public values rivers more today than it did in 1994, when the river keeper team was launched.

“We’re not talking about a just small group of environmentally conscious citizens, almost everybody sees the value in having these spaces, the value of green spaces, the value of rivers,” said Palmquist. “I would say we’re in the relatively early stages of falling back in love with our river systems, and the summer teams today are the spear-tip of that.”

To mark the 3o-year milestone, SOS will send a paddle, signed by the summer team and community members, to the mayor of Paris in time for the Summer Olympics. The idea is to support the cleaning project for the sister Seine River in France.

matthew.frank@freepress.mb.ca