Los Angeles River clean-up yields trashy surprises

The annual Los Angeles River clean-up has been underway all day. And the Sepulveda Basin site alone has yielded a cornucopia of trash.

“They’re digging out shopping carts,” said Shelly Backlar, executive director of Friends of the Los Angeles River. Backlar was working at the Sepulveda Basin site along with about 200 volunteers, including  the Alpha Phi Omega  fraternity’s Chi chapter at UCLA. 

The annual clean-up was taking place at 14 sites along the 52-mile river. “The best thing we have today is a dreadlocked Barbie,” said Backlar.  A volunteer discovered the doll, its blond hair matted with vegetation, in the river and plopped the doll on top of a growing pile of interesting trash treasures. 

A bluegrass band serenaded the clean-up crew. And a pair of mallard ducks as well as a bull frog were among the wildlife that made appearances.

 -- Carla Hall

Comments

[myke]

My crew pulled an area rug, a boombox, a bicycle, and a lawn mower from the islands in the middle of the Los Feliz site today.

[M]

I've been to multiple river clean-ups in this area, including the clean-up yesterday and it is truly disturbing to see how much trash is collected. There were a decent number of volunteers, but there were thousands of other individuals that day at the park, many of them possibly letting little bits and pieces of their trash fly away and contributing to the problem. The only way I could see the river being actually cleaned up is to have a requirement that everyone living in LA over 2 years or so, MUST go to the LA River and spend time cleaning it up and to complete the full circle of understanding the trash they toss on the street or let fly away from their car does not just "disappear".

With that said, the shopping carts aren't all that unique at this site, sadly. A short distance up the river there is a huge pile of shopping carts that some refer to as a "sculpture". The barbie was rather amusing. I found a rusted, bent up grill and a giant wad of strips of plastic in a tree, but the largest percentage of trash comes from plastic. Plastic shopping bags, chip bags and other food bags, ziploc bags, random pieces of tiny plastic from things like lighters, drink tops and every type of styrofoam imaginable. There were countless left over Easter surprises as well including plastic eggs and little strands of faded plastic Easter grass all over.

The LA river is truly a unique environment in LA. There are birds, plants and other wildlife you won't see many other places around here. It's sad that the trash from other places ends up here though. To fix the problem we need the help from everyone in the city.