Abandoned boat tops list of garbage picked up this week

IMG_1742It’s too bad the “Most Unusual Item” monthly contest of the Keep Maine Clean statewide program isn’t in place yet, because I would surely win.

This week, in addition to filling a bag with things the road slobs left on my road-side woodlot, I’m dealing with a boat that floated down from Lake Minnehonk into the brook behind my house last spring. The left side of the boat got stove in on the rocks.

I assume the owner looked for the boat, saw that it was wrecked, and decided to leave it for someone else to deal with. Local game warden Ethan Buuck checked it out for me, but was unable to identify an owner. I did appreciate his effort though.

Now, I’m working to get it out of the brook, through the woods, and up to the transfer station, although I don’t yet know if they’ll take it. Another option would be to move it to the mouth of the pond, where the brook enters Hopkins Pond, and hope it floats out into the pond next spring and sinks. Right now there isn’t enough water in the brook to allow me to easily move it toward the pond.

I hope you’re going to join us in the Keep Maine Clean program, launched this fall by the Maine Resource Recovery Association. James Cote and I are working on the program, along with Shelby Wright, Director of Communications and Development for the MRRA.

Keep Maine Clean will build an army of good folks who pick up trash along our roads and highways, something I’ve been doing for years in Mount Vernon. Regular readers of this column know that I’ve been writing about road slobs, and the proposed Keep Maine Clean program, for years, since Tom Doak of the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine and I came up with the idea.

The Maine Resource Recovery Association is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Bangor whose membership includes 162 Maine towns and cities along with recycling and waste-management businesses. It’s a perfect place to house the program.

Throughout the winter we’re working to build the list of participants in the program, which will officially launch next spring. You can sign up by emailing Shelby at keepmaineclean@mrra.net.  And please join our Keep Maine Clean group on Facebook.

In addition to a regular newsletter, participants will enjoy a monthly contest with prizes for the most unusual items picked up that month.

Meanwhile, I’m open to suggestions for how to deal with this abandoned boat.

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.