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CLYMER - Ten teenagers in Clymer did there part to make Western New York a cleaner place to live Sunday.

The Envirothon Team, also know as the E-Team, from Clymer Central School participated in a cleanup of a ecologically sensitive area known as ''The Possum.'' The area is on the Randy Wassink Farm in French Creek Township, which has been used as a kind of landfill-type environment where farm waste had been going for a number of years. David VanEarden and Kathleen Whitmore, Envirothon Team advisers, found out about the dump area in the ecologically sensitive area on the Wassink Farm and suggested it could be a project for the school club. Mrs. Whitmore said in an e-mail to The Post-Journal that the club would participate in the cleanup to help Wassink in preparation for tilling the soil so the E-Team can plant seeds this spring.

''The ecologically appropriate grasses, shrubs and trees will be planted thus repairing the site and allowing 'natural succession' to continue as has been the case since the 'kettle pond' was formed several thousands of years ago,'' she said.

The "kettle pond" is the remains of an ancient pond formed several thousand years ago by a chunk of clear glacial ice imbedded in the last glacial retreat, said Mrs. Whitmore.

''It formed a very deep pond as the clear ice melted that some locals have measured at over 40-feet deep in the center,'' she said. ''It has, for generations, been known locally as 'The Possum.' Who knows why, but that is the name that has stuck. Farmers from all over the area would cut ice off its surface in the winter and take it home to their ice houses for refrigeration.''

Mrs. Whitmore said the pond has slowly been filling in through a series of stages called ecological succession. It is now in its last stage called the dystrophic stage. In this stage, it has become a ''floating mat'' of vegetation that is very unique to our area.

That is one reason why the state Department of Conservation and Wassink have teamed up with the E-Team for the cleanup.

VanEarden said the cleanup went excellent, with two trailer loads of junk from old refrigerators to bottles and cans were removed from the site.

''There was lots of landfill type of stuff. We found license plate tags from the 1950s and 1960s,'' he said.