Let's talk some trash about the Presumpscot River. We're talking about yesterday's trash pickup by 64 sixth-grade students from Portland's Helen King Middle School.

In an annual school program co-sponsored by Friends of the Presumpscot and the Raft Maine trade association of whitewater rafting companies, the kids scoured the banks of the Presumpscot just below Windham Center Road and downstream into Dundee Pond.

King Middle School students get their instructions from a professional whitewater raft guide.
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Helping inflate the rafts yesterday.
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Launching the rafts on the Presumpscot River just below Windham Center Road.
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Among the items picked up yesterday was this plastic chair.
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It's more than simply a welcome gesture toward keeping the Presumpscot clean on its 22-mile journey between Sebago Lake and tidewater. Teacher Carol Nylen works this trip into lesson plans for her students all year long. Among her projects this year, kids are assigned to write essays on the subject of "Trash Talk."

Two rafting companies and 10 guides were involved yesterday. Guide Josh Gray led a contingent of six from North Country Rivers of Bingham, while guidess -- or did she say "goddess?" -- Kristin Murray headed up a quartet from Three Rivers Whitewater of The Forks.

As I did a couple of years ago, I paddled my own kayak along with the King kids, took some pix and picked up a bit of trash myself. Items I fished out of Dundee Pond included a big plastic bucket and somebody's long-gone air mattress.

My own pickup project yielded the plastic bucket and air mattress shown here in the bow of my kayak.
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Eight of yesterday's guides posed after finishing the cleanup run.
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River guidess -- or did she say "goddess?" -- Kristin Murray.
SCOTT ANDREWS PHOTO

I also talked with Dusti Faucher, head honcho of Friends of the Presumpscot, about mounting a bigger effort on the section below Cumberland Mills Dam, the last one before the river reaches tidewater.

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