Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry The Allegheny River Clean-up ground crew puts items that were pulled out of the river Friday into a trailer at the Starbrick boat launch. Leaving against the trailer is a picnic table cover reportedly from the Nichols and Dimes store in Warren.

There were some changes with the annual Allegheny River Cleanup this year.

But, as always, volunteers paddled their ways along Warren County’s waters, gathering garbage.

“The enthusiasm is as great as ever,” one of the event’s coordinators, David Snyder, said. “The enthusiasm here is huge. You have filthy people out there with shovels, pickaxes, and machetes.”

The event was smaller than normal to accommodate social distancing and outdoor gathering guidelines.

“I sent email to many of the people that have volunteered regularly in the past,” Snyder said. “We didn’t want to have so many people that we couldn’t socially distance.”

There were 10 to 12 canoes on the river on Friday. On a normal clean-up day in a normal clean-up year, there might be 20 to 25. On weekends, the number could be even higher.

See tomorrow’s edition for complete coverage.