Costal Cleanup Day 2009 - Balboa Park LA River site

I recently realized I never said anything about Coastal Cleanup day back in September!

LA River cleanups in the Balboa Park area are super easy to reach by public transportation. I caught the Red Line to North Hollywood and then got off one Orange Line stop too early (Woodley instead of Balboa) and just ended up walking to the next stop near the cleanup site. Although I was somewhat annoyed with myself, I did enjoy the walk someplace that I had never walked before.


walking over the LA River on Victory....


























Although I've walked from the Balboa Orange Line station to the LA River a few times, I had never realized the street was lined with pecan trees!




Growing up in Texas we'd go to the park and pick pecans in the fall. Then we'd go home and used the hefty nut crackers and have a supply of pecans for the next year.





The Cleanup site was well marked this year, which was exciting. Last year there was a little issue at this same cleanup spot and the people with the supplies were on the opposite of the street from when the rest of the people were for the clean up. It was a little weird and confusing though because the first thing I saw was a giant truck and people bar-b-queing



I'm not sure if this is where the money went from the Friends of the Los Angeles River cleanup a few months ago or what, but there were way more accommodations at this clean up than any of the others I've attended at this same site. There were lines of tents, more junk food than normal as well as tools! Some were more suited for different areas (like the rakes and brooms), but the shovels and hoes were much appreciated.













instead of wandering east where we had just cleaned a couple of months ago, we wandered east under the bridge over Balboa to the other side of the street.




































The large number of kids at this clean up when compared to some previous ones was encouraging














A peek into my bag. As usual most of the stuff was plastic - bags, straws, wrappers, random broken items. The hoe allowed us to more easily get at some thing that were otherwise unreachable during some other clean ups.






















At one point my boyfriend and I were digging away and a large group of kids, maybe around 10, came stomping through the plants declaring that there was no more trash! Oh no! I wish I had more time to educate them outside of saying "there is a lot more if you look closely!" I think my boyfriend and I spent about 20 minutes just in this area and we only left before we needed more water.























unreachable plastic hanging from the trees








Progress made with the aid of the shovels! A group of people were working on this for a while and they had trouble leaving this behind unfinished. I told them there are other cleanup events here throughout the years, so I hope they get a chance to come back and make progress before it's covered again...








Another example of the work people did with the shovels and hoes! I happened to take a picture of this same bin when we went to a Friends of the LA River clean up earlier in the summer.






More people working until the last minute! This clean up was also weird in that the people sponsoring it had much of the 'stuff' they brought cleaned up and put away before noon, when the clean up ended. In the past it seemed like things didn't end so abruptly at noon.





A portion of the trash when we finished up at noon. Some of the trash had already been hauled away!

LA River

la river, studio city, nov 1, 2009

I've been walking a lot recently. Something about the night and the streets is very inviting.

Friends of the Los Angeles River Clean-Up - Aquarius Springs!

This past weekend, Friends of the Los Angeles River held a clean-up even in near Lake Balboa in the Van Nuys/Encino area. After having a positive experience with an FoLAR sponsored clean-up this past May, I headed out to this event Saturday morning on the Red/Orange Line.



LA River before starting



One difference with this event was that it was sponsored by Aquarius Springs! water. The beginning of the event started with a few people talking, a presentation of a plaque and $50,000. Local television and print media was on hand to capture the event.



People watching the presentation. I'd be lying if I wasn't super anxious and ready to go (as demonstrated by the fact I was busy taking pictures instead of paying attention...)


I don't know if it was due to recent clean-ups or lack of rain or just that everything was buried, but there wasn't a large deal of obvious trash visible.


At first it looks like maybe there is a single piece of trash there...



... but when you examine things up close, you notice the plastic stuck all over the place.



more trash.....




I'm sure I was neither the first nor the last person to try to pick this up that day. It's the only part of a much larger shopping cart stuck in the ground. I know areas of the LA River near my home don't have the high rate of shopping carts that this area does. A little further up the river, there's a huge pile of shopping carts stuck in the river tangled up and stuck together. Wandering in that area you can find and see shopping carts from stores you forgot even existed.




This guy was telling this woman he was just walking through the park this morning, noticed the clean-up happening and decided to participate. Awesomeness.





So many dried thistles. Back in May they were purple.









The lighting was bad, so this photo does not do justice to the intense and iridescent colors on this beetle. There were also a large number of small intensely blue colored dragonflies that I was too busy watching to take pictures of them.





The opening to a small clearing in a bamboo forest. I could have spent the rest of the day in there.






At one point my boyfriend and I wandered a little bit away from where most people were and stumbled upon what ended up being a huge amount of embedded plastic bags, random items and stringy things. While I was digging and pulling at this plastic, a LA Times reporter came over and briefly interviewed me for a story about the clean-up. I said much more than what ended up in the story, including some comments about companies making the items that end up in places like this should be made responsible for the whole lifecycle of the the items they make, including packaging. Green LA Girl picked up on and brought up this conflict of sorts and how it wasn't mentioned in the article. While I agree since I said something very similar to the reporter, at least there seems to be a decent enough collection rate on CRV items that my boyfriend and I only collected a single crv item - a glass drink bottle, during our 3 hours of cleaning up.




don't be fooled by the beauty...






...there's still trash and other things everyplace. The tree actually grew around the cart. There's plastic in the trees and stringy plasticy things all over.






a trash bin, mostly buried.
When I saw this, I couldn't help but to think to myself about people finding this crap stuck in what used to be the only freshwater source in this area of California, wondering what on earth us 20th and 21st century people were thinking. Why is there plastic, Styrofoam and carts everyplace? Any answer I could give, even today, doesn't speak positively of the society we've created. Because no one told us or showed us? Because we were too lazy? Because we figured it was someone elses' responsibility? Because we figured the part we could do was too small to matter?














Because of the Aquarius Spring sponsorship, the water provided at this event was a bit more wasteful than at the past FoLAR event I attended. At that event I brought along my Klean Kanteen, but FoLAR also provided reusable water bottles and access to a water cooler. The result was no single use water bottles! I was curious how this would be handled this time, but brought along my water bottle anyway. As expected, we received water in single use plastic bottles. On one hand I was disappointed as I know that FoLAR knew how to do things in a less wasteful way. At the same time, I understood and could sympathize with the reply I got from a FoLAR representative in that some things come at a cost. FoLAR also sold and gave away reusable bottles that day in addition to the bottled water.

Overall it was a good event. We had some difficulties with the water situation, but it seems that FoLAR is very receptive, understanding and willing to try to fix these things. I was happy to find out that FoLAR is helping with the Heal the Bay/Coastal Clean-up Day event this year after some problems with the Heal the Bay sponsored event last year at the same location. It does make me frustrated and sad and countless other things to see all of the trash in the LA River, obvious or buried deep in the river beds. This section of the LA River is endlessly fascinating to me after getting a chance to spend time there over the past few years and conveniently easily accessible from public transportation. I find the experience to be somewhat meditative, wandering through tiny slices of nature, cleaning up the city along the way and learning things that nothing else has taught me in such concrete manner.

If you have time this next weekend, FoLAR is holding another clean-up event in Cypress Park.

Friends of the Los Angeles River Clean-ups

On August 22, 2009 from 9am-noon at the Sepulveda Basin at Balboa Park in Van Nuys, Friends of the Los Angeles river will be having another river clean up. I am hopefully going to make it there! This part of the LA river is super pretty and somewhat natural. The last FoLAR clean up I attended was also well organized!

There is also going to be another clean-up event on August 29, 2009 from 9am-noon at Taylor Yard in Cypress Park.

Los Angeles River Abstraction

los angeles river, near studio city and universal city. august 2005