By Dustin Brown
Armed only with gloves, garbage bags and the occasional shovel, a battalion of environmentalists waged war against the elements Saturday in an annual tradition that combines a soldier’s bravura with a raccoon’s fascination for trash.
The Annual Spring Clean-Up and Outdoor Meeting of the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee drew a few dozen lovers of fresh air who donned rubber boots and old pairs of jeans to step through the mucky marshland and remove litter for two hours.
“If more people knew about this, they would probably come because it is actually fun,” said Elana Mugdan, 13, as she climbed across the remnants of a dock on the Nassau County side of the cove.
The volunteer clean-up crew met at 10 a.m. at a small clearing along a narrow stretch of Sandhill Road that cuts through Udalls Cove Park in Little Neck.
Like a general rallying his troops, the committee’s newly appointed president Walter Mugdan gestured to a map as he directed teams to different parts of the wetlands preserve, which sits on the eastern edge of Little Neck Bay.
The mission, the soldiers would learn upon reaching the battlefield, was an impossible one to complete.
“Are we going to get all this garbage?” asked Caroline French, 12, who came with about a dozen environmentally conscious young friends from Little Neck and Douglaston. “Because that would be physically impossible.”
Some volunteers stayed near the meeting area to clean the Aurora Pond, which was named after late Douglaston environmentalist Aurora Gareiss, who state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose) said was affectionately known as the “swamp lady.” She had founded the committee along with Ralph Kamhi, who just stepped down as its president.
“This was a real pond,” Padavan said as he surveyed what remains of it. “Kids in the winter would come ice skating.”
The pond has certainly seen better days. When silt filled the basin and tall brown reeds called phragmites began to overtake it, the city dredged the pond to make more room for water but ultimately removed the clay seal from the bottom that was necessary for it to retain water.
“It’s like pulling the plug from the bottom of a bathtub,” Walter Mugdan said.
But funding has been secured for the city to undertake another capital project that would bring the pond back to life.
Saving Aurora Pond is one of many battles the preservation committee has fought in its 32-year history since its original meeting on the first Earth Day in 1970.
Although they may not have won the war against litter, the dedicated volunteers of the preservation committee are not likely to lose it either.
In fact, the list of things they gained in just two hours could go on for pages: the chipped wooden frame of a boat; a computer keyboard; Styrofoam life preservers; a set of battered lawn chairs; and a piece of yellow police tape that read “Do Not Enter.”
“This is the mother of all garbage!” Walter Mugdan’s daughter Elana shouted with a mixture of elation and disgust as she skipped along the marshy shoreline after discovering an enormous gas tank partially submerged in the water. “If we get it out, it’s going to be so cool!”
Alas, they ultimately left the tank to wade for a little while longer, because the brute strength of about a dozen teenagers was not enough to free it from the muck.
But some trash was even useful, like the green garbage can volunteers uncovered, in which they ultimately stowed much of the smaller debris.
The Little Neck teenagers combed through the cove’s marshy shoreline in Nassau County with few complaints about the gnats collecting on their arms or the mud on their shoes. Their every step pressed deep into the soft earth with a squishy sound, buffered in places by a thick layer of crushed reeds.
Meanwhile, their heads would often disappear beneath the tall wall of phragmites, only alerting others to their presence with an occasional outburst like “That’s so disgusting!”
But for the most part, they demonstrated an environmental awareness well beyond their years, although still tinged with some youthful imagination.
“Unless people learn to be responsible with their trash,” Elana Mugdan said, “the whole world will turn into a big garbage can and we’ll have to move to the moon or something.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
