DEMOPOLIS &8212; Last year more than 10,000 volunteers from all over the Southeast removed 8.5 million pounds of trash and debris from local rivers as part of the Alabama Power Renew Our Rivers cleanup program.

In Alabama alone, a record setting 379 tons of trash was collected with assistance from 5,300 volunteers at 26 cleanups.

Locally, that effort has also been a success. With help from 193 volunteers, the Renew our Rivers campaign was able to remove 37.81 tons of garbage from Lake Demopolis last year, just one of the basins along the Black Warrior River.

The campaign originally began in 2000 in Gadsden and has expanded to include annual cleanups on the six-river system on the Chattahoochee, Coosa, Tallapoosa, Mobile and Black Warrior rivers.

For the 2008 cleanup campaign, the effort is all about getting local involvement. The next planned cleanup for Lake Demopolis is coming up in April.