Friday was a mandatory unpaid furlough day for state workers, but more than a dozen employees with the Department of Environmental Quality kept up with efforts at ecology.
They took to canoes and headed out onto the Willamette River where they spent the morning picking up trash along a half-mile stretch of the banks near the St. Johns Bridge.
The DEQ employees and a Corrections department worker worked in partnership with the non- profit group Willamette Riverkeeper.
The day proved to be a challenging one.
Kate Ross with Willamette Riverkeeper said right now the river is running about 6 feet higher than normal and is full of tree trunks, limbs and debris making it difficult to maneuver around.
But the DEQ volunteers said for them there's no better way to spend a furlough day.
"Every day we go to work because we care about the environment, so on our days off we still have that concern and those values to that’s why we're here," said DEQ employee Jim Coyle.
The group picked up more than a dozen bags full of netting, plastic, Styrofoam tires. They even found a number of discarded hypodermic needles.
The volunteers said they know it’s a small area, but are proud that at least one section of the Willamette is cleaner thanks to them.
And it wasn't just Portland area DEQ employees working on their furlough day. DEQ staff in Eugene spent the Friday preparing meals for a Lane County food bank.
