OTISFIELD — Otisfield has a quiet ecowarrior of its own.

Since 2003, 53-year-old Todd Eachus has been single-handedly cleaning up Greeley Brook, where Bonney Hill Road and Yeaton Swamp Road meet at the bridge.

One year, he removed 200 tires from the brook and its banks, he said.

He frequently removes deer carcasses – bones and entrails – dumped in the brook in black plastic garbage bags. Gallon jugs filled with oil-based paint. Empty worm containers. Computers. PVC pipe. Rugs. Furniture. And piles and piles of trash.

Eachus said the deer remains are from poachers who salvage the meat and dispose of the rest so they don’t get caught.

Although he doesn’t much like fish, he said his mother does. He had just caught five trout that would “make a tasty dinner tonight,” he said.

The trout were from stocking about a year or so ago. He said the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife didn’t stock the brook this year because of the garbage dumped in it.

Greeley Brook, which appears to begin where Lombard Brook splits into Greeley and Sargent brooks, flows into Thompson Lake in Oxford. Sargent Brook originates at Mud and Sand ponds in Norway.

The bridge, where Eachus does most of his cleaning, is on a dirt road near the Otisfield/Oxford town line.

Otisfield doesn’t have a police department, but Oxford does. Eachus has found a champion in Lt. Mike Ward of the Oxford Police Department.

“It’s nice to have someone who can help us clean,” Ward said.

He said Eachus has brought him piles of trash with the hope that the police could identify the dumpers. They could not.

“We even got a handgun out of there,” Ward said.

The gun was sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace, according to Ward, but it was deemed untraceable.

Eachus said Oxford and Otisfield used to clean Greeley Brook and other waterways, but not anymore.

“They just focus on roads now,” he said.

Ward recalls that when he was a child towns would all have cleanup days where you would adopt a road and clean it up.

“They don’t do that much anymore,” he said.

Eachus thinks that the somewhat secluded site is used for a dumping ground because people are too lazy to go the dump.

Eachus takes all of the non-trash waste to the Casco dump.

Often, he dons hip-waders to get in the brook and retrieve trash, he said.

“You don’t want to go in there in shorts and beach shoes,” he said, laughing. “I did that once.”

He said you’ll sink to your waist if you step on the deceptive brook bottom, which is actually very soft mud. Furthermore, he warned, there are three kinds of leeches in the brook.

He led the way down a brookside trail and pointed out a dead 6-foot-tall tree stump.

“Someone girdled that,” he said, “so they could fly fish.”

Girdling a tree means removing the bark in a circle around the trunk, which results in the death of the area above the girdle.

After the tree died, the upper part toppled into the brook during a storm. In the broken top now sits a soda can. Around the tree’s base are cigarette butts.

Eachus points to an upholstered recliner sitting at an angle in the middle of the brook. If he could get it out, he would take it to the dump, he said.

“I’ve tried to get that but it is wood and metal and soaking fabric — heavy,” he said. “The bank is too high — I can’t get it out myself.”

He said he has thought about bringing his ATV with a winch but the steep 4-foot bank is more than the ATV or a come-along can handle, he said. 

“It’s a shame people have to be such idiots,” he said.

“Fish & Game used to stock this with a thousand trout such as rainbow or brook,” Eachus said. “Now they don’t.”

He tells of a time when he first began cleaning the brook when he found someone gill netting. Possession and/or setting of a gill net is illegal on all inland waters in Maine.

Eachus said gill nets catch fish by the gills “and in essence drowns them.” He said the nets also catch beavers, waterfowl, muskrats and other wildlife.

One of his major concerns about the brook is pollution. He cites lead in computers and oil paint as well as other toxins.

“This flows into Thompson!” he said.

Eachus has made calls to the Warden Service hoping that it will help clean up the brook and increase patrols in the area to help catch offenders.

Until then, he plans to continue his one-man war.

“He goes above and beyond,” Ward said.

asheehan@sunmediagroup.com