Volunteer BTV featured in Seven Days

Seven Days reporter Aaron Calvin recently joined our volunteer clean-up at the Urban Reserve and wrote about is experience in the story titled “Queen City Volunteers Pitch In to Clean Up Troubled Spots” published June 24, 2026.

To quote the article:

“A line of volunteers passed bags of trash from hand to hand out of a stand of trees and piled them on a concrete pad by the shore of Lake Champlain.

It was late in the day, but instead of watching the sunset, the group, equipped with gloves, grabbers, rakes and containers for discarded syringes, braved a poison ivy-riddled stand of scrawny trees.

They had come to fill their black bags with the detritus of homeless encampments. They collected sleeping bags and dirt-caked blankets, excavated worn-out tarps from beneath layers of dried leaves, and found fresh signs of habitation in the form of food wrappers, crushed cans and tattered clothes.

The volunteers, led by Nate Lantieri and Maddie Hersam, are members of the DIY Park Clean-Up crew, which focuses on the Urban Reserve, a swath of city-owned wilderness just north of the downtown waterfront. Lantieri was inspired to take on the green space after observing the “tough situation” there during a walk in April.”