Stewards of the White Oak River Basin Current Events

2008-06-25 Frenchs Creek, Camp Lejeune, NC

We launched our canoe and kayaks at the amphibious landing craft area near Weil Point at confluence of Frenchs Creek and the New River.

Here is the group at the launching area. L/R, Dale Weston from Jacksonville, Hugh and Linda Passingham from Maplehurst, Elmer Eddy from Swansboro,

Jack Cleaves from Cedar Point, Mary K. Gardner from Swansboro and Jim Niedermeyer from Hubert. Ed Gruca from Emerald Isle was the cameraman.

The following pictures will take you on our tour today as we explored up the southern shore line of Frenchs Creek and then up Jumping Run Creek and the

on the north shoreline up Cowhead Creek. All of these creeks could be opened to further upstream navigation if the blown down trees were removed. We hope this is done sometime in the near future.

Jim and Elmer heading back downstream after lunch. That is a heavy chair we picked up. It is tilting our canoe slightly to the right.

All these creeks are beautiful as you can see.





Jack Cleaves suntanning his legs.

An osprey nest high up in a dead tree. We must have seen ten such nests on this trip. About half of them were in live pine trees which we have not seen before.
The adults scolded us as we paddled by each one.

Ospreys and alligators. Only one big alligator. Lots of small ones mostly in Cowhead Creek. The young ones didn't know what to make of us.

Our trash was very light and scattered. We got a bag of bottles and cans and plastics, the heavy chair some plywood pieces and an ammunition case numbered
C 23 on one line and 090 below that. A most unusual find was a one quart glass milk bottle. It said on it, "North Carolina approved" and "3 cents return". I'll clean it up and get a picture on here.

Here it is with the 5 cent bottle on the right. These bottles have been in these rivers for 50 or 60 or more years. Think of the countless millions of others that have been thrown into our waters over all these years. Our leaders must do something to stop littering. We suggest they begin to enforce our anti litter laws already on the books. If we don't do this, illegally discarded litter will become a greater problem than illegal aliens because we did not enforce those laws!

I touched up the 3c and 5c markings on the bottles with a ball point pen as they did not show up very good in the above pictures.
Most every one seems to feel that North Carolina should again have the bottle and can deposit law to help curtail littering. We must
do something to stop it or our rivers and road sides with be be our future landfills!

I was a lovely warm summer day and a most enjoyable trip on the water.

Next week we will put in where we did today and paddle down the New River to the 172 high rise bridge. Please plan to join us if you can. More later.Elmer

Elmer Eddy
Elmer, The White Oak River Trashman
Stewards of The White Oak River Basin
101 River Reach Drive West,
Swansboro, NC. 28584
910-389-4588 e-mail: elmer@whiteoakstewards.org
Please visit our website: http://www.whiteoakstewards.org/
"If no one litters, there will be no litter!

# posted by Elmer @ 10:16 AM