Students clean cluttered lake

Lian Fu's seen it before: mounds of trash left in public places for others to remove.

She is among those prepared to clean it up.

The eighth-grader on Monday accompanied 55 other students to Edward Medard Park, just east of Valrico and south of Plant City, where they literally unearthed the sins of boaters and fishermen who over the years tossed refuse into the 750-acre lake, figuring no one would know.

When the reservoir recently was drained to repair the shoreline, those sins were revealed. Thousands of glass beer bottles, plastic water bottles, anchors, chains, batteries and tackle boxes lay stuck in the mud.

"I'm just surprised people would litter as much as they do," said Lian, a Randall Middle School student taking part in her third environmental cleanup.

"It's worth it to give up a holiday for this, and it's also good for the world - to make it so much better," said fellow Randall eighth-grader Yilei Lin.

"It's not going to hurt to give up a couple of hours for the environment," said Ariel Davis, also an eighth-grader.

Students scrambled across the expansive mud flat, digging up road signs, free weights, a skateboard and fishing poles, piling them up for removal.

Austin Keebler and fellow seventh-grader Connor Smith pulled out an old trolling motor someone had lost or tossed.

Others raked in dead catfish, PVC pipes and discarded motor parts.

Getting the students out to show them how litter can warp the environment can be a life lesson, said Karen Wagner of the Alafia River Basin Stewardship Council.

This is the third year Wagner's organization, a caretaker group for the Alafia basin, has worked with Randall Middle School to complete an environmental cleanup.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Environmental Unit used four-wheelers to skim across the sandy lake bottom, collecting piles of trash created by the cleanup crew.

"By doing this, we're bringing up some more environmentally conscious people," Wagner said.