Get out on the Kentucky River and help wildlife with this annual cleanup event

Update: This event has been postponed because of high water and will have a new date announced in early July.

Volunteers from around Central Kentucky will take trash bags and litter pickers to the Kentucky River in Fayette County Saturday morning for an annual cleanup event.

Environmental initiatives specialist with Lexington’s Division of Environmental Services Jennifer Myatt estimates there will be 80 to 100 volunteers at this year’s Kentucky River Clean Sweep. She said the event is an opportunity for participants to connect with a main water source in the area and “understand they are a part of something bigger.”

“We all live in a watershed,” Myatt said. “All of the water drains somewhere, and everything that’s on the ground, whether it’s litter or pet waste you don’t pick up, or the over-fertilization of your lawn, (it) all ends up in a waterway.”

Saturday’s event marks at least 25 years of river sweeps, Myatt said, and allows volunteers to see where the creeks around them feed. She said seeing the trash and the wildlife in the Kentucky River, which spans 255 miles across the commonwealth and 12 miles in Fayette County lends volunteers the opportunity to understand the harm littering has on the community.

“Our drinking water comes from the Kentucky River, and of course, it’s cleaned and filtered before it ends up in our faucet, but it’s important to keep that water clean,” Myatt said. “It’s important to keep it clean too for the wildlife, the fish, people who swim and fish and boat.”

Myatt said volunteers from recent river sweeps have raised a unique complaint: there is less trash to pick up.

“A lot of volunteers have talked about how the river is cleaner than it was when they started,” Myatt said. “They’re like, ‘It’s harder to find trash,’ which is kind of a weird thing to be bummed out about.”

There will still be plenty of trash to collect, Myatt said. From common cans, bottles and wrappers, to the much larger and rarer items like water heaters, she estimated the River Sweep will collect about 1 ton of waste.

The River Sweep will go from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Kelley’s Landing, and participants must arrive by 10 a.m. to get on the water. Lunch and T-shirts will be provided at the end of the event. According to Myatt, volunteers should preregister at lexingtonky.gov/riversweep.

City canoes and life vests will be provided but are limited, so volunteers with canoes, kayaks and life vests are encouraged to bring them.

Myatt said those who can’t attend the River Sweep can help by keeping a trash bag in the car, being mindful of what’s in their pockets and avoiding bagging recycling.

“In your own personal life, there are just little things you can do to make sure you’re keeping litter off the ground and out of the water,” Myatt said.

This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 12:14 PM.