Volunteers show how much garbage was collected on Choccolocco Creek

Volunteers show how much garbage was collected in Choccolocco Creek.

Choccolocco Creek Watershed Alliance

www.choccoloccocreekalliance.org

The Choccolocco Creek Watershed Alliance (CCWA) is an exciting and relatively new project of the Alabama Land Trust. The new group consists of volunteers from various walks of life working together to improve the Choccolocco Creek Watershed. The group is a non-advocacy, broad based group that promotes improving the quality of the watershed and helps encourage the protection of the watershed for the benefit of wildlife, residents and businesses.

The Alabama Land Trust has taken an active role in steering the group towards many events and partnerships throughout the area. In fact, the Alabama Land Trust’s own Christy Claes serves as the Choccolocco Creek Watershed Coordinator to ensure that various projects and events are a success. Choccolocco Creek has been a special project area for the Alabama Land Trust as it has spent the better half of a decade working to encourage landowners to protect the creek corridor and help retain forested riparian buffers critical to water and habitat quality.

The CCWA is new but it has already held many events in and around the watershed.  2013 is shaping up to be a great year  and the first event kicks off in March.

* Clean-The-Creek Event: March 23, 2013 – 8am-Noon

CCWA teamed up with Alabama Power’s Renew Our Rivers effort by hosting a Clean-The-Creek event on the lower Choccolocco. Last year 25-30 volunteers removed 65 garbage bags of trash from the creek. This year, CCWA is hosting the Clean-The-Creek on March 23, from 8 am  until noon and we are always in need of additional volunteers! Register for the event and get  your bags, gloves and free volunteer t-shirt on the CCWA website.