McMinnville’s Breakfast Rotary Club has launched an Adopt-A-Mile program as its river cleanup effort continues.

Adopt-A-Mile is open to any business, church, organization, or group that would like to help keep Warren County rivers clean, all 145 miles of them.

“They would watch their mile throughout the year and keep it clean,” said Rotary member Rachel Killebrew. “We are going to allow people to adopt one or more miles and they can select where they want. We are doing three rivers: Barren Fork River, Collins River, and Hickory Creek.”
Breakfast Rotary conducts an annual river cleanup in July. Hundreds of volunteers converge on the Barren Fork River and spend the day removing trash.

“We’ve hosted the river cleanup for 10 years,” said Killebrew. “There’s been over 300 tons of garbage removed over those 10 years so we wanted to add some new things based on what we’ve learned. The Adopt-A-Mile is in addition to our river cleanup. We’re continuing the annual cleanup.”

Similar to Adopt-A-Mile programs for highways, the river adoption seeks to get the community more involved in keeping the rivers clean by allowing people to adopt a section they can then care for as a project.

St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, Kids of the Community, McMinnville Water Department, and Warren County Utility District have expressed interest in adopting miles.

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is currently generating river maps that can be used to designate any adopted miles. Measures are underway to help people find their section of river, including GPS coordinates and signage.

Breakfast Rotary aims to have a booth set up at Three Star Mall in the next month so people can stop by, look at the maps, and select their sections.