Do you like goats?  Do you dislike kudzu and privet?  Would you like to be involved in the creation of a beautiful and exciting new park on  the Chattahoochee River?  If so, check out this volunteer activity.

The monthly workday for Riverside Park is this Saturday, Oct 3,  at 9 AM.  A group of volunteers will be provided by Hands on Atlanta, and the organizers of the work day also hope to have a good turnout from residents of our area.

Keith Sharp, a resident of the Riverside neighborhood, and an organizer of the work day, had this to say in a phone interview with River Edges:

Riverside Park is really the first phase of Riverwalk Atlanta, that will in the not too distant future be a 100 acre park on the Chattahoochee River. Riverside Park is a small seven acre parcel, that adjoins near the Chattahoochee River, and will soon have walking trails that connect to the river, and be part of the larger vision in the months and years to come. The work that we’re doing is creating walking trail connections between various dead end streets that all dead end at the park, so these will create walking trails that will enable people to completely walk around the block, where in the past they were dead end streets.

The work that we’ll be doing is removing ivy from trees. We’ll be removing privet, using special tools to pull the privet up by the roots. We will be creating walk trails with a special tool called a fire rake that allows us to create the walking path, and as well we’ll be following behind a herd of goats, that have been doing the initial work of invasive removal: eating up kudzu, and privet, and ivy, that was a little bit thicker than what we could do by hand. The goats are still onsite, and have been moved further down from the work area that we’ll be working this Saturday.

The work is organized by the Friends of Riverside Park, affiliated with Park Pride, with support from the Optimist Club of Atlanta, the Riverside Neighborhood Association, and Groundwork Atlanta.

Volunteers will assemble in the of  the parking lot of the Busy Bee Grocery on James Jackson Parkway, just south of the Chattahoochee River bridge.  James Jackson Parkway is called South Cobb Drive on the Cobb County side.

Here’s a map of the location: