Andover River Cleanup Pulls 3 Old Docks, 4 Truckloads Of Debris From Merrimack

ANDOVER, MA — Andover Conservation Division staff, working with Clean Harbors and the Andover Department of Public Works, carried out a major cleanup along the town’s five-mile shoreline on the Merrimack River as part of Andover's Merrimack River Cleanup Program on Wednesday.

The effort is now in its fifth year.

Crews removed the remnants of three old, unusable docks and other debris totaling about four dump truck loads and a trailer full of material.

By volume, officials said, it was the most trash collected in a single day since the program began.

The cleanup involved work on the river and on land. Clean Harbors transported the docks by boat to the state boat launch in Methuen.

From there, an Andover DPW crew that was mobilized on very short notice loaded the debris onto trailers and dump trucks for transport and disposal.

The work was part of a continuing town program focused on cleaning Andover's stretch of the Merrimack. The program was originally funded by town meeting in 2021.

Additional funding was approved in 2026 to continue the effort, according to the source material.

The three dock remnants and several truckloads of debris point to the scale of what crews are still finding along the shoreline, even after several years of organized river cleanups.

The town's cleanup work on the Merrimack is not finished.

Additional Merrimack River cleanups with Clean Harbors will continue monthly into the fall. That schedule keeps the river effort active as Andover continues work along its shoreline.