Clean the Bay Day

Team Zekiah: Caring for Our Natural Resources

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A group of employees and their families volunteered last Saturday for the 31st annual Clean the Bay Day. Our team met at Caledon State Park in King George, VA to remove litter and debris from the shoreline of the Potomac River. While heavy rain and storms in some sites in the state made efforts more challenging than usual, Team Zekiah was lucky enough to enjoy a beautiful sunny day with a refreshing breeze. Our location offered a fun wagon ride to transport volunteers from the parking lot several miles to the water’s edge.

Clean the Bay Day
Zekiah Employees and Family

Set loose on the beach armed with gloves, yellow cleanup bags, and a purpose to collect as much litter as possible, we walked the shoreline for several hours. Park rangers set up a scale back at our drop off spot and waited eagerly to weigh the results and assist volunteers. Once weighed, the debris was loaded into a truck for proper disposal.

Some fun facts:

  • An estimated 808 pounds of trash was removed from the beach at our location
  • The most common items were Styrofoam and shotgun shells
  • The most unusual items were three toys: a Joker action figure, an Ariel sand toy, and a football whistle
  • The largest item recovered was a dock/deck frame dug out by Friends of Caledon State Park and so heavy that it had to be floated back to base!

According to The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Facebook page, “Preliminary numbers show that in just three hours, and under heavy rain in many cases, approximately 3,500 volunteers gathered at nearly 200 sites across the state, on foot and in boats, removing an estimated 45,000 pounds of litter and debris over an estimated 250 miles of shoreline.” A link to the full press release can be found HERE.

Special thanks to park ranger Callie Morgan for being our point of contact and her excellent communication both before and after the event.

About Zekiah

Zekiah Technologies is a small business headquartered in La Plata, MD committed to exceeding the expectations of our clients through innovation and the ingenuity of our technical solutions in the fields of software development, systems engineering, geospatial technologies, and training.