University of Alabama students, professors and a few Tuscaloosa city workers spent five hours cleaning up Lake Tuscaloosa’s shores Friday, Feb. 21.

Mary Pitts, professor and director of undergraduate studies in the geography department, helped organize the event. She said the cleanup is funded by a grant under the Clearwater Act. This is the cleanup’s second year, making it phase two of a three-phase period. Pitts said they have seen student interest increase each year.

“We’ve had growth and interest in the cleanup every year since it started. The first year we had about 10 students or so, last year we had about 20, and this year we almost doubled it at 37,” Pitts said. “First we opened it up to Club Geography. Then we opened it up the geography and biology department, and we even have some psychology students out here. One thing that is key is I added the clean-up to SLPro. This way, it just makes things easier for students to log their hours and get credit for the work they do.”

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Scott Sanderford, Lakes Manager for the city of Tuscaloosa water department, said February is a vital time for a cleanup.

“Doing a winter cleanup is a must. It’s the perfect time because we can get students out here, to a private area with no public access, and take them out to different parts of the lake to clean the shores,” Sanderford said. “During February, there is no vegetation starting to grow yet and there is less bugs, snakes and insects getting in the way.”

Sanderford, who has worked for the city for seven years, has been working on the Lake Tuscaloosa cleanup for six years. While people in the community were coming out to help clean, Sanderford said he wanted more of a student presence. He said the department wanted a day committed for students to participate in cleanup efforts, so he teamed up with Mary to create the event.

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He said the efforts are twofold. First, he said, is getting young people out to help who really care about the environment and want to make a difference, and the second is generating awareness out about how dirty our lakes and shores can get.

“People don’t realize that most trash actually comes from them,” Sanderford said. “It doesn’t come from the boats on the lake or any place like that, most comes from the back of pick-up trucks, roads and from daily life that people just don’t realize. This creates awareness that it’s actually all citizens that create this trash.”

In the past six years, Sanderford, along with the Tuscaloosa community and the student community, has picked up more than 80,000 pounds of trash along the shores and that number grows daily.

Sophomore Archie Creech, one of the students at the clean-up, said the experience was eye-opening.

“It was an incredible experience. My team which was made up of four of us students, filled seven bags of trash in a matter of a few hours,” Creech said. “We only covered a small shore of the lake, and it was kind of disheartening seeing really how much trash is around the lake.”

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