Volunteers Dig Flood Debris From Banks of the Winooski River 

Updated on October 5, 2023.

A few days after the flooded Winooski River washed through the village of Plainfield on July 10, resident Paula Emery noticed dozens of large, heavy-duty, woven plastic bags stuck on river debris and embedded in the muddy banks.

Concerned about the state of the river, Emery got to work cleaning up. As she pulled the trash from the muck on one bank of the river, she saw her friend Alana Norway cleaning the other.

The debris included large white bags and heavy-duty plastic totes, all of which had washed downriver from a nearby hemp company, MONTKUSH, that flooded during the storm.
The two decided to mobilize a cleanup of a two-mile stretch that was strewn with plastic. They enlisted Friends of the Winooski, a Montpelier group that organizes river cleanups, plants trees and promotes water quality in the Winooski watershed. The Friends held a few private cleanup sessions in Plainfield, enlisting help from American Rivers, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, and the company Dealer.com, which sent employees.

Then, with more plastic still there, Norway and Emery put out a call for volunteers. On Saturday, about 25 hardy helpers braved the muck to launch another attack on the mess. All told, the cleanups yielded seven dump truck loads of plastic that had been tangled in trees or stuck under rocks.

Sensing an opportunity, local resident Jodi Vilardi, a Medical Reserve Corps volunteer, held a clinic at the cleanup gathering site, providing four tetanus shots as well as COVID-19 testing kits and tick prevention. The nearby Twin Valley Senior Center donated 30 bag lunches to the community cleanup, which drew volunteers from as far as Burlington. A high school student from Moretown showed up, and a young woman from Montpelier.

“They were superheroes,” Emery said. “We had to climb a sheer bank of mud. The stuff was buried down in this boggy crap that smelled really bad, like decomposing organic matter.”


Many volunteers made their way two miles downstream to look for stray bags; one ended up pulling a basketball hoop, backboard and base out of the mud and dragging it all the way to Plainfield’s recreation field, where trucks were waiting. The helpers extricated washed-away lawn furniture and other debris, too.

“I think we got everything that could be gotten,” Emery said.

Emery, a veteran of volunteer efforts in her village, said she wasn’t surprised at the turnout for a morning of unpaid toil.

“They yanked stuff out, pried things out and used shovels,” she said of the crew. “We had to lift a big trailer in the air to pull the stuff out from under it. Nobody knew anybody, but we all just jumped in and did it. We didn’t really talk about it. You’re all there for the same reason.”

Correction, October 5, 2023: A previous version of this story misreported the number of totes and bags found in the riverbank.