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AYPN Christmas in July
AYPN hosted a Christmas in July Party at DEEP in the Rivermarket on Thursday, July 12.
Four barges loaded with 133,000 pounds of old tires, scrap metal, a collection of creepy-looking dolls and other trash pulled from the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers moored Sunday afternoon on Maclellan Island in downtown Chattanooga.
And — unlike Allen Casey’s dilapidated barge that city officials want gone — no one’s complaining about this fleet.
The barges are operated by Living Lands & Water, an East Moline, Ill.-based environmental group that says it’s cleaned up 8.45 million pounds of trash from 23 rivers in 20 states. The group says it has had 84,000 volunteers since it was founded in 1998 by Chad Pregracke, a then 23-year-old.
“We’re known as the only industrial-strength river cleaning organization,” spokeswoman Kate Runge said.