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Water-Related News

Downtown resident leads ongoing effort to clean up Hillsborough River

Back on July 2, 2019, Scott Harris paused along The Tampa Riverwalk on his daily bicycle ride in downtown Tampa to peek over the white railing into the Hillsborough River. What he saw mortified him.

Cups, empty motor oil bottles discarded from boats, syringes, cans, plastic bottles, styrofoam chunks - and lots of weird stuff - had washed up into the mangroves.

Harris, a financial planner and Channelside resident, immediately started picking up pieces from the heaps of garbage that had washed up.

He hasn't stopped since.

Along with his partner, Marjorie Sandler, Principal at Gorrie Elementary, and volunteers coordinated through social media, Harris' efforts have grown to include about 2,000 environmentally conscious people.

Weekly and monthly, they now show up to help clean Tampa's waterways.

The result? Thousands of pounds of garbage have since been removed from the river and prevented from drifting into Hillsborough Bay and Tampa Bay.