More than 70 students and adults volunteered their time on Saturday, April 22nd (which happened to be Earth Day) to clean up the Ken-Ton School District section of the Niagara River Greenway Shoreline Trail. The group ended up filling six Casella totes containing 665 items of trash that weighed over 100 pounds.

The Niagara River Greenway Shoreline Trail runs from the Tifft Nature Preserve south of Buffalo along Lake Erie and the Niagara River, along the western shoreline of Grand Island, and then along the Niagara River all the way to Lake Ontario. The Niagara River Greenway has established an “Adopt a Trail” initiative which allows organizations and municipalities to “adopt” and care for specific sections of the train. The Ken-Ton School District has adopted a one-mile section of the train between Aqua Lane Park and the Erie County Water Authority and it was this section of the trail that participants cleaned up.

Since adopting this section of the pathway, students and staff have been organizing clean-up efforts on Saturdays to maintain this section of this trail and keep it pristine for the community. 

Special thanks go out to Lisa Valle’s students from Franklin Middle, Melisa Dettbarn's and Anne HusVar’s students from Hoover Middle, the Kenmore East National Honor society led by Dawn Piotrowski, the Kenmore East National Honor Society, Denise Amato and the Kenmore West Environmental Club, and the Kenmore West National Honor Society. Superintendent Sabatino Cimato, Board of Education President Matt Chimera, Executive Director of Secondary Education Lisa Cross, and several Ken-Ton School District parents also pitched in to make this a successful event.