Once she is christened -- with a religious blessing and a bottle of Penn Pilsner -- and officially launched this morning, the Anna Hubbard won't be the only highly visible craft plying the three rivers to have tires.
The quacky amphibious vehicles of Just Ducky Tours have six tires each.
The Anna Hubbard, however, will have as many as 200 tires.
The 28-foot pontoon boat is the lead work boat in the new "Tireless Project," which will work hard, starting today, to remove tires and other trash and instill a more ecological ethic along the riverbanks.
"I'd love to see this become a riverfront equivalent to adopt-a-highway," said Nat Stone, who is supervising the project, based at the new Millvale boathouse of the Three Rivers Rowing Association.
The 34-year-old river rat, who came from New Mexico this spring to launch this effort, will crew the boat this summer with student Megan Rogers of Marietta College in Ohio and one other full-time crew member who has yet to be hired.
The plan is to go out nearly every day to fish out tires as well as shopping carts and other junk. At first, they'll work the roughly 50 miles of riverbank in the nearby "Pittsburgh Pool" of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
They will be helped by volunteers who can come along on the boat or follow in their own.
The boat will be more formally supported by area high school students in the rowing association's new Student Environmental Education Project. They will pitch in by kayak, scouting the edges of the river for particularly trashed stretches as well as helping to spread the word about the project.
At nights and on weekends, the Anna Hubbard is to be tied up at different marinas up and down the rivers, where the crew and volunteers can talk to recreational boaters and others. They'll even camp out on the boat sometimes.
All the rubber collected on the deck will be recycled for playground surfaces, paving and more by Recovery Technology Group of Braddock, and other trash will be transported and properly disposed by the city of Pittsburgh and other riverside municipalities.
But organizers know just picking up trash isn't enough, so the project will campaign to change people's perceptions and actions so they no longer use the rivers as trash cans. Workers will take the message before town councils, schools, even door to door.
"The larger goal is to promote what seems to be a growing appreciation for the beautiful side of these rivers," said Stone.
He became intimate with that four years ago when he rowed some 6,000 miles on Eastern rivers and other waters, an epic journey from Brooklyn, N.Y., to the Gulf of Mexico and back that became his book, "On the Water."
It was on the Ohio River leg of that trip that he noticed more tires than he could count and mused about ways to erase them. It was also on that trip that he stopped here and met rowing association Executive Director Mike Lambert, and the Tireless Project was conceived.
Anna Hubbard was a name Stone also learned on the Ohio. In the 1940s, the Cincinnati librarian and her teacher/artist husband, Harlan, abandoned life on land to live three years on a homemade houseboat, which they chronicled in the book, "Shantyboat: A River Way Life."
Stone, who wonders why it isn't more widely known as an American classic, said he plans to stock several copies to lend out from the boat. And why not a library? He's decorated its sparse canvas-covered "cabin" with donated potted plants.
The environmental education project was funded by $5,000 from GreenWorks.tv. The Tireless Project is funded by $13,000 from the Heinz Endowment and $1,500 from the Ingram Barge Co., but Lambert said that's only about half of its budget, so more sponsors are being sought.
Eager volunteers found the boat before it was even renovated, Lambert said.
"We've got people from mayors to city council members to fisherman to people who just wandered by who've said, 'Yeah, I'd love to do that.'
"It's a reason to be out on the river."
For more information, call 412-821-1710. Details eventually will be posted on the Web site www.threeriversrowing.org.
Bob Batz Jr. can be reached at bbatz@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1930.
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