Funniest Thing They Found Cleaning the Zumbro River in Rochester

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What do you s'pose you'd find if you walked along the Zumbro River and its banks in Downtown Rochester, Minnesota? If you guessed a whole lot of golf balls and one very coincidental ID, you'd be right.

Joan Rabe and friend kayaking in the Zumbro RIver

According to the Rochester Downtown Alliance (RDA), this is their Zumbro River Cleanup, by the numbers.

7 Hours (9AM - 4PM)
1 Student ID (scroll down for the funny story of the student ID).
20 contractor bags of litter
52 golf balls
1 Welding torch assembly
1 Rusty bike
1 full-size plastic cigarette reseptacle.
60 Dollars

Who Did The Zumbro River Cleanup?

There were three groups working together to clean up the riverbanks.

Rochester's Clean and Safe Ambassadors
Rochester Downtown Alliance staff
City of Rochester's Community Action Team

Now, about that student ID.

Karli McElroy (Rabe)

Karli McElroy, the RDA's Director of operations, stopped by to talk about the Zumbro River Cleanup and told this story about The Student ID.

So Tim, one of our ambassadors, he was walking along the river banks and this wasn't like a big piece of debris or anything, but he was walking and he found a student ID and it was actually his cousins ID...from North Iowa Community College,
I was like, you're joking. You didn't find your cousin's ID. And he's like, yeah, lookit. And sure enough (his cousins ID from at least 4 years ago). Yeah. So I was like, well, as long as your cousin's not attached to it, like you're okay!

Hit play to hear the whole conversation...trust me, it's worth it...super funny podcast.

What Is the Clean and Safe Program?

Cleaning ambassadors will focus on sanitizing high touch areas of public spaces like door handles, garbage can lids, and benches. Additional cleaning services will include power washing sidewalks, picking up litter, pulling weeds, and removing graffiti. (Source)

As always, if you have a comment, complaint, or concern about something I wrote here, please let me know: james.rabe@townsquaremedia.com

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