Groups of students and community members are expected to get up early and help beautify the White River on Saturday morning.
Muncie Delaware Clean and Beautiful is heading this year's White River Cleanup. The organization will be working closely with Student Voluntary Services.
SVS is making this a part of its 10,000 Hours of Service campaign. The goal of the campaign is to generate as many community service hours from Ball State students as possible.
The cleanup was rescheduled for this Saturday after Tom Reeve, executive director of Muncie Delaware Clean and Beautiful, sent an email explaining the dangers of being exposed to the river Saturday, Sept. 10.
"E. coli is an indicator of the presence of pathogens such as those that cause typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis A, and cholera," he stated in his email. "On Thursday, following steady rains and a discharge from a combined sewer overflow, E. coli levels exceeded the State's safe level of 235 cfu/100 ml, and may take several days of dry weather to return to safe levels."
The project has been running for five years and this is Ball State's fourth year participating.
Associate professor of sociology Melinda Messineo stated that she is expecting about 75 students and 125 members from the community.
The projected student volunteers will be shuttled from behind the College of Architecture and Planning building on campus starting at 7:45 a.m. Saturday morning. They will be met at the river by the volunteers from the community.
The two drop-off points for the shuttle are McCullough Park and Westside Park. The shuttles will run from campus to the parks for about an hour. Most student volunteers can expect to be back on campus around 12:30 p.m.
Taking into consideration the rescheduling, which currently coincides with Ball State's Family Weekend, Messineo said she would like to have a big student turnout. Another event, the tailgating cleanup, is being held the same day. This is also part of SVS's 10,000 hour effort.
Ball State's Bass Club will be in attendance, waders and all. The diving and swim teams will be participating as well.
Canoes will be available in order to assist in the digging out of larger pieces of garbage. Lunch, free T-shirts and awards will wrap up the day's work around noon.
"People can get as wet as they want to get," Messineo said. "If the [E. coli] counts are too high this weekend, we will just clean up the banks and not get in the water."
The Westside Park cleanup in October also allows for the opportunity to volunteer. The park cleanup will involve painting some of the playground equipment and cleaning up the surrounding area.
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