It’s time to pull on gloves and grab a bucket to pick up trash along the coastline. Saturday is the 30th annual California Coastal Cleanup Day.

Solano County, including Benicia, is participating again, said Marianne Butler, event coordinator, who said 3,000 or more volunteers will gather at streams, sloughs, riversides and along the Carquinez Strait, as well as at Lake Berryessa.

The volunteers will spend three hours picking up trash and recyclables in what may be Solano County’s largest Cleanup Day, Butler said.

In this county alone, residents have 57 coastline and watershed sites from which they may choose. “From the Sacramento River at Rio Vista to the perennial creeks that flow from the Blue Ridge through Fairfield, Vallejo and Vacaville, to the shores of Lake Berryessa, there’s a cleanup site that needs your help,” she said.

Benicia has its own set of sites, said Sue Frost Alfeld, Coastal Cleanup coordinator for Vallejo and Benicia.
Volunteers may choose from the foot of First Street, West Sixth Street, Alvarez West Ninth Street Park, West 12th Street Beach, either side of Benicia State Recreation Area, and Benicia High School at the baseball field.

“They can show up at any site,” Frost Alfeld said.

She has other sites reserved for Benicia’s Girl Scouts and students from various schools.

Frost Alfeld said one important volunteer will be missing from the Benicia cadre. “We will miss Bonnie Weidel,” she said. The longtime artist and teacher was a recurring helper in the Cleanup. Weidel died in April.

Because of this year’s severe drought, Frost Alfeld said volunteers may not find as much trash. “When it rains, you’ll see a lot of trash,” she said.

On the other hand, the drought may have made it easier to reach the water, she said.

Putah Creek is another site welcoming volunteers, said Sara Tremayne, stewardship coordinator for the Putah Creek Council.

“Because water runs downhill and picks up anything in its path with enough force, every bit of loose trash, soil or chemical pollution can get carried to our creeks, river and eventually the ocean, harming wildlife, water quality, and scenic beauty,” Tremayne said.

“Storm water is not filtered before it drains into the creek, so everything on the streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and gutters can get washed into the creek in a storm.”

Putah Creek sites are available on the website www.putahcreekcouncil.org. Volunteers may contact Tremayne at sara@putahcreekcouncil.org or by calling 530-795-3006.

Once volunteers pick a site, they will spend three hours Saturday morning picking up trash and other items that otherwise could escape and contaminate the water as it flows out to the ocean. Volunteers will dump their buckets of trash and recyclables into collecting bins.

Alarmed by the growing amount of plastic debris littering the coastline, the California Coastal Commission organized the first Coastal Cleanup Day in 1985.

Community events took place at the beaches that year, and nearly 2,500 took part.

By the early 1990s, the event had spread inland after organizers realized that much of the garbage found on beaches began as urban trash and street litter that found its way into upland waterways.

In 1996, Solano County participated for the first time, sending volunteers to creeks, rivers and lakes as well as coastlines around the county.

That first year, 418 county volunteers picked up 19,300 pounds of trash and another 2,647 pounds of recyclables.

The event has grown since then.

By 1998, more than a thousand were participating. In 2007, the county broke the 2,000 mark for participants. They collected 55,475 pounds in trash and 3,117 in collectibles.

Two years ago, 2,942 volunteers removed 80,963 pounds of trash and 2,863 pounds of recyclables.
Coastal Cleanup volunteers have found some unusual discarded items, too.

They’ve discovered an egg-shaped golfball, a tiny Bible, a concrete rabbit statue, a 1962 Dodge convertible, an old love letter, a guitar, a fire extinguisher and a teddy bear.

“Last year someone found parole papers from San Quentin,” Frost Alfeld said.

They also recovered an automated teller machine, a handgun and a jar of beetles.

She said one year, volunteers found old metal pieces that date to the area’s shipbuilding days and the carcass of a cow that had washed down the Carquinez Strait and had become lodged at Dillon Point.

“The Coastal Cleanup event has evolved into one of the world’s largest data experiments, where the trends observed and tracked over 30 years of events have proven to be consistent, and reveal information about how we live and how our choices affect our waterways,” Butler said.

“The trends also reveal a growing understanding in Californians about the real-life links between taking care of our waterways on Coastal Cleanup Day and year-round coastal protection efforts.”

Butler said some studies estimate 80 percent of the trash on the state’s coast comes from inland areas, either from land or carried by water.

“As the population of California grows, it becomes increasingly important to clean up trash at its source, to stop trash where it starts before it can travel to the coast to protect the health and beauty both of the interior of the state, and of our coastline,” she said.

Narcisa Untal, Solano County Department of Resource Management senior planner, said she is hoping volunteers will make this not only a cleaning event, but also a “green” one, too.

Ironically, past events have created some garbage, she said, after volunteers were given disposable gloves and bags in which to collect the trash.

In recent years, event organizers have asked volunteers to do their part to reduce that impact.

“Please consider bringing at least one reusable item to the cleanup site,” Untal said she is asking each volunteer. When volunteers bring their own reusable work gloves, water bottles and buckets, it reduces the amount of additional waste the Cleanup Day itself can generate.

“If people can’t do this, their help will still be appreciated,” she added, explaining that buckets and gloves will be available to those who are unable to bring their own.

However, in the past, many volunteers remembered to bring their own supplies, and Untal said she believes that trend will continue.

Among the sites still needing volunteers is Markley Cove at Lake Berryessa, Butler said.

Those interested in spending Saturday morning preparing the lake for fall and winter may call Butler at 707-301-5778 or email her at Marianne.butler@solanorcd.org.

California Coastal Cleanup Day is organized by the California Coastal Commission, with Crystal Geyser Natural Alpine Spring Water by CG Roxane as its lead sponsor.

Solano County’s Coastal Cleanup is sponsored by Integrated Waste Management Local Task Force and local cities and wastewater agencies, Butler said.

Support also has been contributed by Caltrans, Star Realtors, Dixon Starbucks, Pure Grain in Vacaville, Home Depot in Vacaville and Fairfield Home Depot, Solano County Water Agency, Morchetti Coffee of Vallejo, Genentech and Walmart in Dixon.

Frost Alfeld said besides cleaning the environment, volunteers in Benicia will have other incentives. Each will receive a Rubio’s Restaurant gift card.

They also can participate in Coastal Cleanup Day photograph contests, for which prizes will be awarded to winning pictures posted at https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaCoast and http://instagram.com/thecaliforniacoast.

Those who take pictures of themselves, including “selfies,” with trash can post them on Twitter with the hashtags #coastalcleanupday, #litterati, #trashselfie or #OceanLove.

The California Coastal Commission will choose a grand prize winner, who will receive an eight-day, seven-night stay at a Grand Mayan resort in either Riviera Maya in Cancun, Nuevo Vallarta, Los Cabos or Acapulco.

The Coastal Commission will give its own prizes for most unusual items collected. Those entering must take a picture of their found items and post them to Facebook at #coastalcleanupday or #mostunusual.

They also can email their photographs to coast4u@coastal.ca.gov.

Two winners will be chosen, one from the California coast and one from the state’s inland area. Each will receive a $100 Visa gift card.

The statewide campaign is encouraging volunteers to take “before” and “after” pictures and pictures of volunteers to be posted daily on the Cleanup’s social media pages, Shannon Waters, volunteer programs coordinator, said.

While the selfies and prizes are designed to encourage participation and let volunteers have more fun this year, the event is still a reminder that protecting and cleaning the environment isn’t just a one-day affair, Butler said.

“Effective stewardship is a year-round goal,” she said. “Through environmental education programs, we educate thousands of students in our school programs. These students take the information home to share with and educate their parents.

“Our business and organizational partners help us get our message out to even more people. Every partner makes our program stronger.”

The Coastal Cleanup begins at 9 a.m. and concludes at noon Saturday. At the conclusion of the Benicia events, volunteers will be served a cookout lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs donated by the city of Benicia and prepared by members of the Lions Club.