When 13-year-old Fernando Vasquez got asked to go to the largest cleanup of the Los Angeles River in city history on Saturday, the Van Nuys youngster hesitated.
He didn't think there was going to be anything to pick up.
Boy, was he wrong. So very, very wrong.
"I thought, `Nah, I don't want to go, there's not going to be that much trash,"' Fernando said. "But when I first got here, I was like, `Wow, it's a mess."'
Fernando was among an estimated 5,000 people who volunteered at 14 sites along the L.A. River and two tributaries as part of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's annual Day of Service, pulling about 25 tons of garbage from between its concrete-lined banks.
"It's important for all of us to get involved," said Villaraigosa, who took a short trip in a kayak in the river and fished out a plastic bag with an oar. "It's folks understanding that everybody can do a small part in making the community better. The L.A. River connects the San Fernando Valley and all the communities ... all the way to the ocean, and it's a great opportunity for us to reclaim the river ... and create a different future."
At one site in Van Nuys by Balboa Golf Course, one of the few spots where the river has a sandy bottom and dense brush, about 500 people balanced precariously on rocks and trudged through the dirt while picking up trash.
"I got a whole outfit - tank top and shorts," said Quynh Nguyen, a parent who was chaperoning Mission Hills
grade school students and an Encino Cub Scout pack. "This is a great community service opportunity for the kids as well as a great educational activity, too."Some, using long sticks or bamboo poles, hooked plastic bags caught in trees, and waded into knee-deep water to pull out bubble wrap and discarded clothes.
"It is our environment," said 12-year-old Orion Coreas, of Reseda, who gave up trying to keep dry after falling into the water several times. "And it keeps back the trash from the litterers so it's not as much of a problem. It's like I'm picking up their trash. It's kind of fun."
Other activities included trail maintenance, graffiti removal, birdwatching, community drum circle, native planting, water quality testing, bicycle safety workshops, children's art and bridge tours.
Other volunteers were sorting through the collected garbage, filtering out recyclables. They were also keeping track of the volume, weight and types of trash that had been picked up to learn the most common items that ended up in the waterway in hopes of preventing more from being washed to the sea.
"The river is very important to the Los Angeles region," said Jan Bryant, site coordinator with Friends of the L.A. River, a non-profit which coordinated the event. "Any trash that goes in here goes to the ocean, and it creates health hazards. We're getting trash out of the river to make it a cleaner place for the community and to make it more beautiful."
Volunteers also found a purple, velvet couch cushion with gold trim, a newsrack, five shopping carts, a plastic workhorse, and tons and tons of disintegrating bags. Past "river treasures" have included a phone booth, a sauna and a car.
"It's pretty messy," said Fernando, who collected three bags of trash. "People with their littering and all that, Mother Nature doesn't like it."
Monet Mazur Bali Rodriguez Lindsay Price Sienna Miller Estella Warren
No comments:
Post a Comment