The River and Me

Clean Water Action

On the morning of the cleanup, Evette wakes up early, too excited to linger in bed. Mom has already left for her hospital rounds, so Dad drives Bud and Evette to the dead-end street after breakfast. Grandma and Grandpa Peeters wait among dozens of buzzing volunteers, but Gran E is nowhere in sight. Ashlyn, Ziggy, and Gia arrive, too, and Gia even wears a “Save the Earth” t-shirt, surprising Evette, who hadn’t taken her for an environmentalist. So much for assumptions!

More cars pull up, including Maritza and Makena. The three girls are chatting when a young man in an electric car arrives. He hands each of them a garbage bag, introduces himself as Kasey, and jokes that Evette really delivered on volunteers before leading everyone to the water’s edge to claim grabbers, bags, and canoes.

Evette pulls on a life jacket and climbs into a three-person canoe with Makena, Maritza, and Kasey. They paddle along the bank, pulling up plastic bags, bottles, cans, and Styrofoam caught in a fallen tree. When Maritza asks why people dump here, Kasey explains that getting rid of garbage, especially big items like tires, isn’t free, so people and businesses illegally dump it in out-of-the-way spots where nobody will see them, avoiding arrest and fines.

Makena asks if this happens everywhere in D.C. Kasey says it happens all over, but it’s worse on the east side of the river, where mostly Black residents live and the environment gets less monitoring. Factories and illegal dumping are more likely to go ignored. Makena calls it racism, and Kasey agrees. It’s environmental injustice piled on top of racism.

Evette connects it to her fifth-grade lessons on the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, meant to prevent this even though enforcement doesn’t always follow through. Kasey adds that not everything here was dumped deliberately; some trash blows into the water by accident or washes up from sewers during storms, and can even drift in from another state when the Chesapeake Bay pushes the tide upriver for miles. The river connects many places.

When they finish paddling, Kasey and Evette carry the trash bags up to the street for Monday’s garbage trucks. Evette then thanks Ashlyn, Ziggy, and Gia and says goodbye before inviting Makena and Maritza to join her family for lunch.

At the picnic table with the rest of Evette’s family, there’s still no sign of Gran E. A text from her says she won’t be able to join them, with no explanation given. Evette feels a pang. She had said wild horses wouldn’t keep her away, yet she’s not here. Now Grandma Peeters can’t talk to her.

After lunch, Grandma and Grandpa Peeters leave, and the others get back to work. Bud, Evette, Makena, and Maritza comb litter from the ferns while Dad, Kasey, and his crew haul a lawn mower and an old armchair out of the river and drag them to the parking area. Everyone forms a human chain to roll the trashed tires up the hill. Kasey explains that rotting tires leach toxic chemicals that poison fish and plants. By late afternoon, the group has hauled out almost fifty tires along with bags of trash.

When they finish, the grass is trampled, but it gives Evette real satisfaction to see the riverbank free of trash. She’s just sorry Gran E isn’t here to see it. Makena says Evette will think of another idea, and Maritza says the cleanup was fun and that they’ve really accomplished a lot. With one day of hard work, they’ve healed part of the river. If only it could be that easy for Evette’s grandmothers to heal the rift between them.