Clean Sweep NC

Students lead effort in cleaning Ellerbe Creek. NCSSM’s Accept the Greener Challenge club and Envirothon Team led a group of more than 20 NCSSM students in a stream clean up at Ellerbe Creek as part of the NC Big Sweep, a statewide event designed to remove litter from waterways and natural areas across North Carolina. Students filled numerous bags full of trash from Ellerbe Creek and also had several surprising finds, such as a golf club, toy light saber, and part of a wheel. NCSSM has officially adopted the section of Ellerbe Creek from Maryland Avenue to Albany Street as part of Durham’s Adopt-a-Stream program. For more than five years, NCSSM students have been participating in regular stream clean ups in that section of the creek as part of the NC Big Sweep, NCSSM’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of service activities, and even as part of the NCSSM Online Summer Symposium on the Global Water Crisis. Students in NCSSM’s Biology and Chemistry courses also regularly gather data on stream water quality at Ellerbe Creek and have measured plant species diversity and removed invasive plant species in the adjacent Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association’s 17 Acre Woods preserve.