On Sunday, we had an AMAZING Earth Day cleanup with 57 volunteers giving Arcade Creek a massive overhaul removing an estimated 3,500 pounds of trash and human-made debris!
Over the last 2 years, we have completed 79 cleanups of this one-mile stretch of creek, removing the many layers of trash, couches, blankets, shopping carts, tarps, tents, pallets, full size garbage cans, and so much more. On Sunday, it was time for a “maintenance mode” visit, the first time we have been back to this stretch since last November. It was time to remove what had washed downstream from the winter storms. We covered about 2,000 feet of channel, clearing 4 to 5 moderate size debris dams full of trash and other scattered debris caught in the bushes and creek bed.
We were ecstatic to see a limited number of bulk items that typically plague the channel! A tire, plastic and wood pallets, part of a “Milk Muscle” banner, and some textiles, but mostly lots of single use bags, beverage containers, food wrappers,…..and LOTS of styrofoam! Ewwww!
The wonderful volunteers who stayed up top carefully canvassed the walking & equestrian trails and removed pockets of carelessly discarded litter and illegal encampment trash, including a massive pile of over 50 large bottles filled with urine 🤢! This place is shining bright, but the fact that we still removed this much trash from a short stretch is terrible, albeit much less than previous years. We are making great progress!
After the morning cleanup was finished, 5 of us stayed behind to do some additional cleaning in the creek. We found two more debris dams and worked an additional 4 hours to remove single use plastic bottles, lighters, milled lumber, shoes, and even chemical cans! We still have more work to do and will be back Tuesday evening to finish up this stretch of creek. Come join us if you can!
Thank you to Audrina Lehman & Arcadis North America for collaborating with us to make this wonderful event happen and bringing so many volunteers and their families out to help, to YPCE - City of Sacramento for providing parking space and a large dumpster for us to use, to Arcade Creek Adopt A Creek Project for co-hosting this event with us, and to Caltrans HQ for donating trash grabbers and bags!
Volunteers Make It Happen! 💚
🎶Innocence, by ROA
𝐑𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞
𝘝𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 & 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴
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