It's been more than 30 years since Lake Erie was considered dead. Since then, there's been a massive clean-up. Sure the governments been involved but so has a group called the sons of Lake Erie.

"We’re like the deputy sheriff in town. We just want to make sure it stays clean,” Bob Zawadzki says.

Zawadzki says the group is building a boom across this creek.

The idea is to collect pollution before it gets into Lake Erie. Ironically some of the garbage in the creek is a direct result of city policy.

Treating storm water is expensive, so some sewers have been disconnected from the city system.

“One of the things that has happened when they separated storms sewers in the city- it’s allowing the run off from the streets to run into the bay where before it would have gone to the wastewater treatment plant and got collected down there. So consequently anything you throw in a street or ends up in a street and hits the storm sewers will now end up in the bay,” Zawadzki adds.

That means cigarette butts, pop bottles even fast food wrappers end up there. A boom has been collecting garbage from another local creek for 15 years. The Sons of Lake Erie hope theirs works just as well.

"Erie, Pennsylvania was once considered the fresh water fishing capitol of the world. And we had diminished down to what was basically nothing. So we were committed to try and improve that,” Jerry Skrypzak says. Skrypzak is also a member of the group.

The price tag on the new boom is $ 62,000 dollars. It’s being funded with a growing greener state grant.

Hunters and fisherman are a great resource for conservationists. They have first hand knowledge of local environmental issues. That knowledge often times goes back several generations.