Gulf Power Joins Effort To Renew Rivers
With teamwork you can move mountains - even mountains of debris. Gulf Power employees rolled up their sleeves each year to help restore a national treasure.
In its inaugural participation for Gulf Power for the Southern Company-wide Renew Our Rivers effort, volunteers converged on Gulf Islands National Seashore near Gulf Breeze in 2006 - and will again in 2007 — to clear litter and storm-tossed debris.
In 2006, they filled a 30-yard dumpster twice, resulting in more than 7.5 tons - about 16,000 pounds - of debris removed from the fragile, recovering seashore.
Hurricane Ivan's storm surge piled debris 5-feet high along the shoreline in 2004, which was cleared by work crews. But shifting tides and currents unearthed more debris and washed it ashore.
Gulf Power crews recovered construction lumber, Styrofoam, insulation, carpeting, decking, roofing, pier pilings and even a mailbox from a storm-razed Pensacola Beach home more than a mile away.
2006 was the first year Gulf Power participated in Southern Company's Renew Our Rivers campaign, the annual cleanup of rivers, lakes and other waterways which has spread throughout Southern Company's service territory.
It started out in 1999 as a local cleanup of the Coosa River around Alabama Power's Plant Gadsden. Over the next five years, it grew to include the entire Coosa, Tallapoosa and Black Warrior river systems in Alabama, the upper Coosa in Georgia near Georgia Power's Plant Hammond and other waterways in seven watersheds in Georgia.