Correspondent photo / Sean Barron ... Vicki Maslo of Twinsburg and her son, Luke Maslo, 12, pick up trash along the main road near Mill Creek MetroParks’ Lake Newport during the cleanup.

BOARDMAN — Even though Vicki Maslo lives about an hour from Mill Creek MetroParks, she hasn’t allowed the physical distance to diminish her desire to make what many say is one of the Mahoning Valley’s greatest treasures a bit cleaner and greener.

“We love our (local) parks, but we’re still happy to come to a park people cherish,” Maslo, of Twinsburg, said.

Maslo, along with her son, Luke Maslo, 12, and daughter, Nora Maslo, 14, showed some of that happiness without concern over getting their hands a bit dirty, because they were among several dozen volunteers who took part in a Mill Creek Watershed cleanup that got underway Sunday morning at the East Newport boat launch site.

Partnering with the Mahoning County Soil & Water Conservation District for the three-hour beautification project were Mill Creek MetroParks, Boardman Township, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Mahoning County Green Team and Buckeye Water to Trail Adventures, Zack Felder, the SWCD’s district outreach and education specialist, noted.

The volunteers got hold of black plastic bags and grabbing devices before breaking into two groups — one of which removed trash and debris from the park’s wetlands area and adjacent trails, and the other that did the same on the lake to clear it of “floating trash.”

Beforehand, an early-morning thunderstorm had rolled through, but left in its wake mostly cloudy skies, temperatures in the mid-70s and a slight breeze.

For Nora, the cleanup effort will provide volunteer hours, obtaining a certain number of which is a graduation requirement at her high school, she said.

For their parts, the family bagged everything from bottles to paper to candy and other wrappers, Vicki Maslo added.

“We are all doing this for the sake of water quality improvement. … It’s important to maintain water quality so people can recreate for years to come,” Kathleen Vrable-Bryan, the SWCD’s executive director, said.

Calling Mill Creek Park “one of the gems of our community,” Vrable-Bryan added that Sunday’s cleanup also is personal because she spent part of her childhood with friends ridding the park of litter and trash, she recalled.

Also following that trajectory was Anna Lazar of Youngstown, who works for the Ohio EPA’s Division of Drinking and Groundwaters.

“I grew up in Youngstown, and Mill Creek Park was always sort of my introduction to loving nature,” said Lazar, who also was a geologist and part-time Youngstown State University professor of environmental studies.

A love of the park was ingrained in Lazar partly because her father, George Lazar, 76, was a Cub Scout leader who often led his Scout packs and his family on hikes. In addition, the elder Lazar accompanied his daughter and her students on field trips, she recalled.

During Sunday’s cleanup, Anna Lazar collected mainly cigarette butts and lighters, as well as fast-food wrappers, she said.

“We’re going around the shoreline to see what we can get from the water,” Evan Jagger, who runs Buckeye Water to Trail Adventures, said, adding that his initial plan was to kayak to the wetlands area.

Jagger, who was accompanied by his wife, Molly Jagger, and daughter, Lennox Jagger, 7, estimated that his group had picked up 1,128 pounds of trash — which included tires and oil drums — over an 18-month period in the Alliance area.

For her part, Molly Jagger found an old discarded General Electric blender that an online search revealed had been made in the 1940s, Evan Jagger said, adding that he also helps to clean the Cuyahoga River in and around Akron.

Ohio’s No. 1 pollutant is sediment, because it carries a host of other pollutants with it and deposits them, Vrable-Bryan noted.

Also, the SWCD is strongly urging citizens to monitor their water quality. Along those lines, the agency has a program to teach them how to take water samples and check the samples for possible pollutants, she said.

For more information, call the SWCD at 330-740-7995, or go to www.mahoningsoilandwater.org