Volunteers at Tidioute wrap up a day of the 2021 Allegheny River Cleanup operation.

Unfortunately, after 13 years there’s still plenty to find.

There were 184 volunteers involved in the 13th annual Allegheny River Cleanup including Conewango Creek over the past two weeks.

Those volunteers donated 1,472 hours of labor.

From the waterways and the land around them, those volunteers pulled bicycles; a bread maker; a working cell phone (turned over to police); a bed (mattress and box spring); several large appliances (kitchen and laundry); about half a pull-behind camper; the septic tank from that camper; a variety of sporting equipment including a sled tackling dummy that was returned to Warren County School District; a variety of outdoor chairs; an acrylic bathtub with shower surround, and hundreds of other interesting items.

In all, there were 66 tires, 2,675 pounds of metal, and 33 cubic yards of trash taken out of two waterways that were named Pennsylvania River of the Year in the last seven years. The Conewango was River of the Year in 2015 and the Allegheny won in 2017.

The effort receives funding from scrapping metal – the metal pulled up during the cleanups and donations of scrap. This year, a dumpster was placed at AutoZone in North Warren.

“In addition to 2,675 lbs. of metal collected from our waterways, our local communities donated an additional 13,375 lbs. of scrap metal for recycling in support of the cleanup effort,” according to the organization. “Thank you to everyone who helped with this year’s cleanup.”