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Chattahoochee Riverkeeper will host their 13th Annual Sweep the Hooch river cleanup event on Saturday, March 25 from 9 a.m. to 12 noon.

The annual volunteer event is a watershed-wide day of service to the Chattahoochee River. Two cleanup sites are available in LaGrange, but there are more than 60 cleanup sites to choose from along the Chattahoochee watershed, which stretches from north Georgia, near Helen on through Metro Atlanta down to Columbus.

Middle Chattahoochee Sierra Club Group will host a cleanup at McGee Bridge Park and Civilian Conservationists of LaGrange will host another at Sunny Point Park. Both local cleanups are “walking” sites where volunteers clean up trash along the shoreline. Henry Jacobs, Middle Chattahoochee Director for Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, said the volunteers have cleared literal tons of trash from the river.

“This is the 13th year. Over the last 12 years, we’ve had more than 9,200 volunteers help us remove 204 tons of trash from the watershed,” Jacobs said.

These days Chattahoochee Riverkeeper sees around 1,400 volunteers for the event. Troup County usually has 50 to 100 volunteers.

“The City of LaGrange has supported this cleanup effort over the years. We appreciate that a lot. The majority of the trash over the last 12 years — that 204 tons of trash — has been collected upstream of West Point Lake. I think it’s pretty great that we’re helping remove a lot of trash from the river before it reaches our lake,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs said space for each cleanup site is limited, so sign up to volunteer at sweepthehooch.org.

“We’re closing in on the maximum number. There’s still space for the two sites on West Point Lake. It would be great to fill those two sites up,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs encouraged volunteers to register online.

“We would prefer not to have folks just showing up unannounced,” he said.