Lynner pledges to clean up pond

LYNN – Patrick Coppola is cleaning up Floating Bridge Pond single handedly, one piece of trash at a time.The 23-year-old Lynn native paddles a kayak daily from the dock behind his pond-front house at 34 Victory Road, scouting for debris protruding from the surface or lurking just below in the dark depths.”I really wanted to go to Louisiana to help with the BP oil cleanup, but I couldn’t afford the plane ticket or the hotel once I got there,” said the eco-conscious 2006 Classical High graduate. “So this is my way of doing a smaller thing but still make a difference.”Coppola began his paddles in the stubby green Vertex kayak about a month ago. As of last weekend he had amassed a pile of trash that includes a lawn mower, air conditioner, animal cage, bicycle, myriad of branches and at least 10 automobile tires. On Tuesday, he netted a variety of empty beer bottles.”People just throw the tires off the Buchanan Bridge,” he said. “Whatever I see I try to pull in with a long blue rope. The trash on the surface I can just skim with my net and put into a bucket. The bigger stuff I tow, like a tugboat.”The son of former City Councilor Harry Coppola and School Committee member Donna Coppola, he recently moved from the family home into the rental house on the pond, intending to fish for bass, perch, carp or whatever might bite on the line.”When I got out there fishing, I couldn’t catch anything because I was always pulling in trash on my line,” he said. “It was ridiculous. So I thought I would clean it up.”Coppola, who works at a Beverly group home and plans to attend Salem State College in September to study psychology, said the air conditioner proved the heaviest object, the rabbit cage the biggest.”If the thing is really big, I can tie one end of the rope to it and the other end to the kayak, then paddle to the dock and start hauling,” he said. “I see a lot of turtles every day, but so far not any fish.”Anyone wanting to assist Coppola in the cleanup can email him at [email protected].