Leaves are falling, the weather's cooling.  Community groups are getting their last licks in on cleaning up local streams before winter sets in.

On Saturday, Oct. 30, from 8:45 a.m. to noon, volunteers are needed in Catonsville to clear litter, tires (where do they all come from?) and other junk from Bull Run, one of the many overlooked and (until now) neglected streams that flows into the Patapsco River, the most ailing tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. 

The Friends of Patapsco Valley and Heritage Greenway, which is organizing the cleanout, urges volunteers to wear waterproof boots, long pants and shirt (to protect from thorns) and bring work gloves, water and sunscreen.  Volunteers are to meet at the Catonsville Armory, 130 Mellor Avenue, before crossing the road to get at Bull Run.  Walk-ups welcome, but to sign up online, go here.

Next weekend, on Nov. 6, the cleanup shovel swings to the other side of Baltimore, as volunteers tackle Bread and Cheese Creek, a colorfully named but trash-strewn tributary of Back River, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

The area to be policed, from Merritt Boulevard to Plainfield Road. was cleaned out last fall (as pictured above), but litter, junk and shopping carts from nearby shopping centers have found their way into it again - necessitating another cleanout.  (This is why some more systemic approaches to litter need to be found - before volunteers burn out on the Sisyphean task of repeatedly removing tons of debris from their neighborhood streams, only to have to do it all over again in a year or two).

For more, go here. 

(Bread and Cheese Creek cleanup, September 2009.  Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)