ALONG THE OHIO RIVER — Many showed up Saturday morning in the spirit of volunteerism, out of a sense of civic duty. But some of them came to the river because it is part of their community, because they've come to know it intimately when it filled their homes with floodwater.

        “I live right there,” said Ken Chambers as he pointed at his elevated house atop the riverbank overlooking the Ohio River in Moscow. “We go boating all the time, so it's only fair to keep it clean.”

        Mr. Chambers was one of 2,500 volunteers in Greater Cincinnati who participated in River Sweep 2002, the 14th annual cleanup of the Ohio River's banks.

        “You name it, we find it,” said Jeanne Ison, River Sweep coordinator for Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, which organizes the cleanup. ORSANCO is an interstate agency charged with protecting the river from pollution.

        Saturday, volunteers collected about 6 tons of trash, from refrigerators to fishing bobbers, in Hamilton and Clermont counties in Ohio and Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties in Northern Kentucky. Along the entire stretch of the Ohio last year — from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Ill. — 22,000 volunteers picked up and hauled away 9,000 tons of garbage.

        Joe and Laura Thomas of Flor ence canoed along the edge of the Ohio in the East End, and by late morning returned to the boat ramp at Schmidt Field with a canoe laden with the detritus of humanity — a badminton racket, milk crates, baby seat, flowerpots and plastic bottles.

        Mayor Tim Suter of the village of Moscow — population 244 — was one of about 25 volunteers who turned out along the riverbank on a blustery morning. “I enjoy the river and like to see it cleaned up,” said Mr. Suter, lifting driftwood from the shore and dropping it in a village maintenance truck.

        Tiffany Hughes, 16, Mr. Suter's stepdaughter, worked the banks of the Ohio in Moscow.

        “I have to do it every year,” she said. “It's the law.”

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