LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County's participation in the annual statewide Coastal Cleanup removed more than four times as much trash from local waterways as it did last year, thanks to a record number of volunteers.
The 30th annual California Coastal Cleanup Day, held Saturday morning, had an estimated 850 cleanup sites across the state, according to the California Coastal Commission, which sponsors the cleanup.
Lake – which had four focus sites – was one of 55 counties that participated in the cleanup, which the commission said is state's largest volunteer event.
Statewide, with 75 percent of the cleanup sites reporting, the Coastal Commission said there were 54,124 volunteers who picked up 576,571 pounds of trash and 109,494 pounds of recyclable materials, for a total of 686,065 pounds or 343 tons.
The cleanup doesn't just focus on the coast, but also inland waters like Clear Lake and local creeks.
“It was absolutely outstanding,” said Carolyn Ruttan, invasive species program coordinator for Lake County Water Resources, who organized the local cleanup.
The county of Lake had three gathering sites for volunteers: Holiday Harbor in Nice, the Big Oak Shopping Center in Clearlake Oaks and the Lake County Fire Protection District station in Clearlake, with Shady Acres Campground in Clearlake sponsoring a fourth location.
Across those four sites there were 55 volunteers, a number “way higher than we've ever had,” said Ruttan.
Ruttan said the Saturday cleanup covered 14 miles of creek and lakeside.
Those 55 volunteers collected 8,700 pounds of trash, which included 200 pounds of recyclables, and filled 71 trash bags, Ruttan said.
For comparison, the 2013 event had three dozen volunteers who removed 1,680 pounds of trash and recyclables.
She said volunteers removed 90 tires and hundreds of feet of fishing line.
Despite the fact that Redbud Audubon Society has set up fishing line receptacles at docks around Clear Lake, “We need to do more about fishing line,” Ruttan said, noting it “gets entrapped in all these gorgeous critters that are using our lake,” often killing them.
Among the big finds was an aluminum boat volunteers pulled from the lake, as well as a shopping cart, a lot of clothing, three car batteries – “I've no idea how they wound up in the lake,” Ruttan said – and disintegrating dock floats.
Ruttan found two-thirds of a $20 bill near the Clearlake fire station gathering site, adding she intends to frame it as a memento of the cleanup.
The Coastal Commission said the winners of the 2014 Most Unusual Item contest included a volunteer in Ventura County who found a polar bear costume on the coast, and for inland California, a volunteer in San Joaquin County found a preserved blowfish ornament.
Based on data from past cleanups, the commission said that 60 to 80 percent of the debris on California's beaches and shorelines is made up of single-use disposable plastic items that originate on land, traveling through storm drains, creeks, or rivers to the beaches and ocean.
This year the Coastal Commission also continued an effort, initiated during the 2010 Coastal Cleanup, to reduce the environmental footprint of the cleanup.
The commission reported that it asked volunteers to bring their own reusable bag or bucket and reusable gloves to the event, rather than using the single-use disposable plastic items that were available at every site.
Thanks to this effort, the commission was able to order almost 50,000 fewer trash bags for this year’s event than in prior years, and early reports indicate that the popularity of the effort is growing.
The latest reports show that 11,489 volunteers brought at least one reusable item from home for use during this year’s cleanup, the commission said.
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