On Saturday, 13 trash-hungry volunteers attacked a section of Arcade Creek we've visited countless times over the past few years. In fact, this was our 63rd visit to the short stretch between Shadow Creek up to Auburn Blvd (near Mtn Mike's Pizza) - a distance of roughly 2,200 feet. Before last weekend, we had already removed 98,000 pounds of trash from this section, including 101 shopping carts.
Despite the trashy history of this stretch, on Saturday we were pleasantly surprised with how little new trash we encountered! Rather, we mostly uncovered old “legacy trash“ that had obviously been lying at the bottom of the channel for decades.
Most of us spread out within the dry creek channel, while Vicki and Chuck stayed up top to extract our loot by rope. Since we were scrounging to find much towards the end, we took the opportunity to remove unnatural concrete and asphalt chunks from the creek bed. These materials not only leach toxic chemicals into the channel, they also have sharp edges that can tear through our waders and boots and cause artificial debris dams of trash and sediment. This is a vicious cycle we are working hard to prevent.
We are so grateful to have a wonderful partnership with a family who lives on the creek. They have provided access to use their yard and driveway multiple times. As a result, our haul route is about 100 feet, instead of 1,500 feet! Thank you! 😃
In the end, we removed 1,490 pounds of trash and debris hat David & Lisa took to the local dump, using our free dump vouchers from Sacramento County - Government. Every cleanup gets this neglected creek closer and closer to it’s natural, healthy condition.
Volunteers Make It Happen! 💚💪
River City Waterway Alliance
𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 & 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴
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