HAVERHILL — The city's efforts to capitalize on the Merrimack River and promote tourism have an enemy that one local environmental group has uncovered.
A dry summer resulting in low water levels has been a problem for boaters, but a boon to the nonprofit Clean River Projects, which wants to remove junk from Haverhill's stretch of river, just like it has done upstream between Lawrence and Lowell.
Rocky Morrison, president of the Methuen-based Clean River Projects, said low water in Haverhill has exposed more junk and debris than he ever imagined existed, including hundreds of tires, vehicle axles, water pumps, furniture, shopping carts, appliances and other items.
Morrison said his 5-year-old volunteer organization is ready to clean Haverhill's stretch of river, but its efforts are being stalled by the city, which wants the work to be done for free.
Morrison said that when he addressed the City Council last year there was talk of setting aside $12,000, which would help his group pay its expenses to come to Haverhill, including gas and maintenance for its three pontoon boats, as well as for insurance and the cost of food for its 20 members and its volunteers.
He said Mayor James Fiorentini told him in the spring there was no money available and asked his group to do the work at no charge to the city.
"There are a lot of challenges in Haverhill, with the tides and rocks," Morrison said. "Between Lawrence and Lowell it's flat water. They don't have tides or a major problem with rocks, but it's nothing like Haverhill."
City Council President Michael Hart said that if $12,000 would result in Haverhill's river being swept clean of the kind of junk Morrison said is in it, the cost would be well worth it.
"When he addressed us, he told us what he could do for us but now it sounds like he has information he didn't have before," Hart said. "Here we are advertising the river as one of our prime resources, and we have a chance to get the river in shape, and we say we can't come up with the money. They're offering to do us a big favor and we're saying no thank you to them."
Hart said there might be a pocket of money that could help provide the group with funds they are seeking.
"It seems we may be penny wise and dollar foolish to accomplish a task that if we had to pay for it would be many times that amount," Hart said. "I think it would be helpful for him (Morrison) to go back before us with a follow-up."
Morrison and his group patrols the river in specially designed pontoon boats from spring to fall each year in search of junk. Most of their work up to this point has been a 16-mile stretch of shoreline between Lawrence and Lowell.
"From the smallest thing, like a soda can, to large things such as cars, we hand pick whatever we find and take it out," Morrison said.
His group brought two of the boats to the recent Haverhill River Ruckus and had set up an information booth behind The Tap, where they showed photos of their work upriver.
"While we were in Haverhill I noticed a lot of stuff along the shores, including a lot of tires, which I thought would have been washed out to sea. But what happens is the tide takes them downstream then brings them back at high tide."
"It's a mess," Morrison said about his recent discoveries, including two 55-gallon oil drums on the Bradford side of the river opposite Haverhill Stadium and more than a dozen shopping carts along the shoreline there, as well as numerous vehicle parts, furniture, appliances and other items dumped into the river over the years.
At first, Morrison estimated there might be upward of 1,000 tires along Haverhill's shoreline, from Kazmiera Marina to the Methuen line. On Sunday he returned with eight volunteers to conduct another survey. They found a sea of tires, hundreds of them stuck in the muddy river bottom opposite the former Haverhill Paperboard Co. property in Bradford. They also found mounds of plastic bags 6 feet high and stretching 1,000 feet along the Bradford bank.
"We thought we could remove 100 tires from the middle of the river to the banks so when we return next spring it would be easier," Morrison said. "But once we removed 100 there were at least 700 or 800 more looking at us."
He said that entire stretch of riverbank is loaded with plastic bags, coat hangers, and other plastic items, which are all decaying into the waterway.
"We thought Haverhill would be easy to clean up, maybe a month's work, but it looks like it's going to be a lot longer than that," Morrison said. "We're just cracking the surface of this."
Morrison said the problem is so big that he wonders if the city should invite the governor to visit so he can see the problem and possibly obtain federal stimulus money to clean it up.
"It's a lot worse than what I thought and worse that anything we found between Lawrence and Lowell," Morrison said. "We're still surveying in Haverhill and have miles to go."
Haverhill Harbormaster Michael Vets said low water levels this summer have revealed rocks in the river that he's never seen before.
He said low water levels caused about a half-hour delay in the start of the recent Haverhill River Run powerboat races, and recreational boaters are having to contend with rocks that don't usually cause navigational challenges.
Low water levels also are revealing junk that is usually hidden beneath the water.
"Anytime a piece of junk is taken out of the river that's a good thing," Vets said.
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