Riversweep turns to spring cleaning on Lake Wylie

The Lake Wylie Marine Commission and Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation are taking spring cleaning to another level.

Riversweep returns in 2016, but it won’t fall on its usual date. Instead of the first Saturday in October, this year’s Riversweep is May 21. Online registration starts March 21 at lakewylieriversweep.com.

“We had to cancel last year because the lake level was so low, it was dangerous for boats to be out there,” said Lake Wylie Marine Commission member Neil Brennan, a Riversweep co-organizer with Ellen Goff of the Riverkeeper Foundation.

The 2015 event would have been the 14th annual volunteer cleanup.

“Because many, if not most boat ramps are closed, our boaters are unable to launch their boats; many boats are high and dry in their lifts. As a result, there are too few boats for the event to be successful,” the foundation stated in the fall.

Now, organizers don’t want to wait until fall.

“We wanted to clean up the lake last year, and we weren’t able to,” Brennan said. “We didn’t want to let it go two years.”

The May event could determine when the event will be held moving forward.

“We won’t do another one this year, but we’ll take a look at it and see if we want to continue holding it in the spring or if we want to move it back to the fall in 2017,” Brennan said.

There are reasons for holding the 2016 Riversweep earlier. While droughts severe enough to close boat ramps aren’t common, when it does happen it’s following the heat of summer. Ramps may not reopen until the fall, leading to uncertainty or a lack of lake access for organizers.

Also, Riversweep has grown in recent years to include up to 1,000 volunteers and multiple sponsors. The spring event provides an opportunity to bring sponsors back on board, and to highlight new ones.

Goff said the spring event “might be a real change of pace.” In the fall, other events such as Komen Race for the Cure draws people who might otherwise volunteer at the lake event. The annual Lake Wylie Children’s Charity fall benefit concert sometimes fall on the same weekend and location as Riversweep, the following day.

Having prepared in the fall helps.

“We’re well positioned with our preparation,” Goff said. “When we canceled the 2015 event, we were within two weeks of the event.”

The rains that didn’t come last summer made up for it in the fall, flipping the switch from drought to flooding in many parts of South Carolina. High water on Lake Wylie “have really added to the seasonal load” of trash and debris, Goff said.

“We were concerned not only about letting trash build up on the lake, but also letting trash build up in the lake for such a long time,” she said. “It’s also looking at putting the cleanup at the beginning of the summer season.”

By placing Riversweep the weekend before Memorial Day, organizers expect more boat captains. They are reaching out to homeowner associations and planning drawings for boat captain, early registration and volunteer sites. They are working to add a another cleanup site in Belmont for a total of 14 locations. Many partners are marinas or other users who benefit by drawing people to the water earlier in the year.

“They're going into the boating season instead of coming out of it,” Goff said.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 11:28 AM with the headline "Riversweep turns to spring cleaning on Lake Wylie."