These two groups of students organized and promoted creek cleanups and worked to increase creek access in their areas as part of Atlanta Creek League. Below are some photos of them planning their events as well as an example of some of the promotional materials they created.
And if you’re in the Georgia State area, you can support the ongoing work of Atlanta Creek League by signing up to Play for Clear Creek (Jaz’s Team)!
Volunteering with Atlanta Creek League has been amazing and beyond my expectations this semester. Through this opportunity, I’ve explored my neighborhood and parts of it that I didn’t even know existed. About two weeks ago, Hannah(One of the founders of Atlanta Creek League) and I explored the neighborhood I live in to determine the water flow using the creek’s start and end point. During this process, we discovered that my neighborhood’s creek doesn’t have a name, so we plan to name it soon, and for the time being, we are calling it ‘Garden Hills Creek.’
So, we first started locating the water stream in different parks in the neighborhood, and we successfully figured out that the Creek water starts at ‘Frankie Allen Park’ and ends at ‘Peachtree Hills Park.’ We’ve found that the water comes through a pipe at ‘Frankie Allen Park,’ from there, it’s just a stream again flowing through a couple of pipes.
So the creek flows as such: ‘Frankie Allen Park’ —– ‘Sunny Brook Park’ —– ‘Alexander Park’ —– ‘Peachtree Hills Park’ —– ‘Peachtree Creek.’ There is another creek that flows from ‘Sidney Marcus Trail’ and then connects to the one from ‘Alexander Park’ and combines flow to ‘Peachtree Hills Park.’ The creek is rich with wildlife, and based on my observation, the water seemed clean and fresh. Also, Hannah taught me the difference between English Ivy and Poison Ivy. It was an experience I would never forget, and I still keep visiting these parks every weekend since I first visited them for sights of new observations and encounters.
So as this creek has no name to it for now, Hannah and I are thinking of giving it a name, and soon we’ll be planning to work on it. I never thought that I would be connected to an organization as I currently do with Atlanta Creek League. I personally love exploring the nature-rich parts around me, but I never thought that I’d have some very close to me, and being a part of this organization helped me with that. For my final project, my fellow volunteering partner Noor and I decided to share our experiences and discuss some basic information about creeks in general. We will combine our experiences and our creek’s information for better understanding.
Atlanta Creek League has allowed me to set up a clean-up of my local creek. It is always so exciting to be able to do hyper-grassroots events. This creek has been a key part of my childhood, I can remember the cold water on the hot summer days. Recently, my creek has undergone some extreme construction. While this construction is to help the ecosystems within the creek, it still caused a big strain on it (funny how that works?). Old construction materials and plastic litter the creek, and I am so excited to help this nostalgic area.
One thing that has really surprised me about all of this is the sheer amount of people that are dedicated to helping the wildlife in Gwinnett County. Gwinnett County has three officials that focus on the creeks and rivers of the region, and their overall health. I have contacted all of them but unfortunately have not heard back. It would be very interesting to meet with them. Contacting people to help with this event has been exhausting, and more challenging than expected. A lot of these people have extremely busy schedules, and I have struggled with finding a certain time to meet with them to discuss my event.
Even though it has been chaotic trying to contact a lot of different organizations to help out, I have been very much supported by a lot of different organizations. Of course, Atlanta Creek League has helped me immensely with certain people to contact. Hannah, the founder of ACL, is an amazing person and an extremely altruistic person. I have struggled a lot with getting in contact, and she has helped me immensely. She also has been kind enough to add Garner Ceek to the Atlanta Creek League website. Garner Creek Club, is the high school club that helps out the creek once and a while. It is interesting to work with them because when I was in high school, I participated in the exact same club. It was so nostalgic and pleasing to me that people are continuing to help this creek out.
Overall, I am extremely excited to host my event! It is scheduled to be the day after Earth Day, and I am excited to hand out my project to volunteers. After this event, I would really like to continue to work with Atlanta Creek League. They are such an amazing organization and I could not use my time better. For all of you that are reading this, get in contact with them! They are enthusiastic and amazing if you would like to give back to a community. Attached below are some photos of the construction trash, and the creek itself. I hope you get inspired to check out your own creek!
Recently, I began my work with the Atlanta Creek League by collaborating with Hannah Palmer, one of the minds behind the initiative, to begin building a local creek team. The Atlanta Creek League aims to engage communities in the Atlanta area with their local creeks in a fun and competitive way. By building creek teams and river divisions, communities across Georgia can find interactive and rewarding ways to be more aware of the natural world around them as well as improve the conditions of these critical water bodies.
Many people live around creeks or have one just in their backyard, but may not know much about it. In fact, some creeks are not even named as a result of the lack of awareness about the local bodies of water around us. Prior to beginning my work with the Atlanta Creek League, I knew about the parks around me and the bodies of water (particularly lakes and rivers) that surrounded my house but I didn’t know much about the organizations that maintain them, the names of the creeks and rivers in my general watershed, nor the counties boundaries they cross over. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know much about creeks at all. Talking with Hannah and looking into the incredible work she and others involved with the Atlanta Creek League have done for our local watersheds made me all the more excited to learn about my own creek and how I can play a role in preserving it. Learning the importance of preserving watersheds beyond the borders of counties, cities, and legal jurisdictions dictated by maps really opened my eyes to how those boundaries can affect the livelihood of the creeks around us. I learned what my watershed is, how far it extends, the organizations that may be involved with its preservation, and how to start building a team for the creek. Here is a picture of the Little Mulberry Watershed that’s in my area, in case you haven’t seen it or heard about it before!
This watershed, like many others, connects so many different people from different cities, counties, and neighborhoods. I’m excited to start engaging the community with my local creek and have people meet each other and connect that would have otherwise never considered themselves a community with a shared regional feature or identity. I’m eager to begin with the projects I have planned out for my creek to raise awareness about and enact the preservation of Little Mulberry creeks and rivers. Beyond that, I’m happy that this initiative will also give communities around me an opportunity to connect with each other and collaborate on the bodies of water that sustain us and our environment.
I can’t wait to update you guys again, hopefully with more faces in the pictures and another step towards creating a team for my creek!
Since I am not a Georgia native, I had no idea what to expect when Mrs. Palmer, the founder of Atlanta Creek League, suggested that we should explore Clear Creek, which is a part of the Chattahoochee River watershed. It was a fun experience to learn more about the creek and connect with those on the BeltLine who were not aware of which creek they were near. However, even though we were able to have fun, we were also able to find heavily littered areas in the city. One prominent example was the area under Piedmont Avenue Bridge in which I have an active case with the city for litter removal.
Regarding the goals that were set out, Mrs. Palmer and I decided to set our focus on outreaching to local communities and businesses to be more conscious of water pollution as well as informing them of which creek one is located nearby by entering their address on the website. The act of easily locating which creek an individual lives near is the most interesting aspect of Atlanta Creek League due to the shocked expressions people have when they are able to name something they have always looked at. As mentioned before, we were able to meet with people on the BeltLine and it was humorous to see the sheer surprise on their faces. Moreover, not only is this aspect interesting since it takes a short amount of time, but it can also provide unexpected outcomes since an individual will be able to take the first steps in becoming involved in watershed issues and in contacting organizations that are dedicated to their creeks.
My service assignment is informing my final project since I am getting a firsthand account of what I am promoting, a promotion of interest in one’s local creek, for my digital brochure. It is also informing my final project since I am mapping out where Clear Creek is and noting how crucial its protection is for Atlanta’s water to be safe.
I would highly recommend Atlanta Creek League to anyone. In fact, I have already recommended the organization to individuals in my other organizations due to its important work and because the people I have worked with are extremely nice as well as caring. I would also recommend it due to the founder being highly efficient and passionate in her work.
I do believe that I will dedicate more time in the future to serving this organization as I have made many connections with the people I have helped, and met, since we have a common cause. Additionally, I will dedicate more time to this organization since their work directly affects me as I have to use Atlanta’s water system that obtains its water through the Chattahoochee River and is connected to the surrounding creeks, which highlights its importance even more.