Thousands of volunteers made their way to the banks of the Connecticut River for the nineteenth annual Source To Sea clean up this past Saturday. The two day event was organized by the Connecticut River Watershed Counsel and had many "clean-up groups" spread out along the river.

Angela Mrozinski, the outreach and events director for the counsel, said they had "about eighty to one hundred different groups who spread out all along the length of the Connecticut River, cleaning up the river in their backyards.”

“It’s really amazing to think about all these groups going out on one weekend working together. It’s estimated that there’s about two thousand to twenty five hundred volunteers this year, that’s about five thousand hands out there working for our river and that’s really cool.”

One of the groups volunteering included the Springfield boy scouts. “There’s a lot of volunteers and we like to get scouting part of it to make our community a little bit cleaner,” said Devin Douville, of troop 49.

Throughout the day volunteers gathered waste and recyclables, bringing them to drop off spots to be collected. “I usually come here with my Mom and her job, we clean up around the same area and it’s getting better so that’s good, it’s kind of staying clean,” says Brown. Areas like Springfield’s North End bridge are considered high risk zones and left for officials to clean, leaving volunteers with safer clean up duties.

Mrozinski emphasized that “you’re part of something bigger, that we’re all working together as part of a source to sea cleanup.”