If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
That's the philosophy Cambridge resident Mike Myrshall followed when he first started his Clean the Creeks Cambridge, a Facebook group that invited people to join in on local creek clean up projects.
It began earlier this year in March, he said, when he was having a beer at Mill Race Park and noticed how much trash was all around him.
"'I wish somebody would clean it up,'" was the thought that crossed Myrshall's mind. "And I was like, everybody just complains about this and nobody is doing anything, so I'll come clean it up. I put it up online and a few people came out to help."
After they'd cleaned up a section of Mill Race Park, he said he put out a call looking for another spot to clean. His friend Heaven Leigh Wolf's partner, Matt Taylor, sent him a photo of Moffat Creek Trail.
"I was like, 'Hell, yeah, we're gonna go there,'" said Myrshall.
And so he and about a dozen or so people that come out to help every Saturday started cleaning the creek and the woods surrounding it.
"We wear masks, we wear gloves, we separate into groups of two and we scour the woods and pick the garbage up," said Wolf. "We handle it properly, we put it down by the tree."
Since they started, Myrshall said, they've pulled out hundreds of pounds of garbage from the creek, including a chicken coup fence, clothes, plastic bags, a car muffler and abandoned tarps and some paraphernalia, which he suspects is left behind by the homeless people that squat in the woods.
"I go in the water because I have my hip waders," he said, adding he had spent his own money buying the gear, while Food Basics donated a large number of garbage bags to the group.
"He also handles all the paraphernalia," Wolf tacked on.
"I'll drag all the stuff out of the water to the shoreline," Myrshall went on. "Everybody else grabs it and haul it off. We drag it all down to the same spot."
Then they call city bylaw to let them know of the piles of garbage awaiting pick up in a green space facing Elgin Street South.
Where city bylaw will come by and pick up what the group leaves there, Myrshall said that's about all the help he's had from the city.
A text conversation through the city's Facebook page shows an unidentified staff member telling him that the city isn't giving out gloves this year as part of spring clean-up. The message goes on to share a link Myrshall can use to map the locations where they leave what they drag out of the creek.
"Everybody who walks these trails are super nice and give us Gatorade and thank us," he said.
But Myrshall said it seems like deja vu every time they return to clean another section of the trail.
"The homeless people steal the clothes out of the donation bins, take the bag back here, rip the bags open, look through the clothes, decide they don't want any and then leave all that crap here," explained Wolf. "We come down here and there's a whole bag of clothes that could have gone on someone's back."
Myrshall said the problem is that the people that are forced out of their homes are not respecting the area they're temporarily forced to use.
"I've been homeless; but if I was going to camp outside somewhere, I'd clean it up," he said, adding they've tried to share garbage bags with the homeless people they've encountered in the woods.
Wolf, who lives on a street that backs onto part of the trail, said she can see fires lit in the woods from her house up on the hill.
"They're going to end up lighting Moffat Creek on fire, and that's going to burn all of (her street) down," she said, adding, "It's just going to keep on happening and the best thing we can do is to clear it out and come and clean it up in a couple weeks when there's a big haul to get it out of there."
Myrshall said he was forced to take a break due to a family emergency, but he will be back at it on Victoria Day weekend and will post about it on Facebook to alert those interested in coming out to help.
