Today’s blog post comes from our Director of Development & Marketing, Morgan Justice-Black.
I know what you’re thinking…someone please spare me from another voting campaign!
While the November elections might be over for some, things are just heating up for us here at I Love A Clean San Diego. We’ve been selected as one of eight environmental nonprofits battling it out for a $25,000 donation from San Diego Gas & Electric. That’s right, we’ve got a 1 in 8 shot to win enough money to educate an additional 4,000 kids this school year! But we need your help to get there!
Yes, I understand your slight fatigue from being asked day after day to participate in someone’s online voting campaign. Whether it’s cutest baby (ok, we get it, you think that your kid is the cutest one out there), to pet of the week, to talent competitions, there is no lack of requests for online voting. In fact, even the term “voting” makes me slightly nauseous after enduring months of campaigning leading up to the November 6th election.
Please take a moment to do these quick and easy steps to help ILACSD win this thing!
Remember, you can vote once a day from now until December 6th!
And in case you need a little more encouragement, take it from this guy who at 8 years old is pretty insistent on saving the environment. At an ILACSD cleanup he told one of our staff members “You know, I would risk my life if it meant a greener earth!” We aren’t asking you to risk your life, just take a few moments of your time to vote for ILACSD every day!
At 8 years old, he’s ready to risk his life for a healthier environment!
Today’s post comes from the newest member of the ILACSD team, Erika Bjorkquist our Education Coordinator!
30 days, 14 presentations, 3 community events.
Two months ago, I would never have guessed that I would be sitting at a desk surrounded by recycling posters, maps of San Diego Watersheds, and aerial photographs of human sand designs. Two months ago, I was visiting my grandmother in Oregon, on a road trip from New Jersey to San Diego. I checked my email and Facebook, found nothing of importance, then progressed to what I had been putting off: the burden of finding a job. I was about to give in to the temptation of tomorrow when I found it, I Love A Clean San Diego in bold: Education Coordinator, full time, application due Friday. Tomorrow became sparkling and bright.
Fast forward. I have now been the Education Coordinator at I Love A Clean San Diego for 30 days (I just received my business cards, so I’m official!). In that time I have come in contact with thousands of people, old and young, at cleanups, community events, and education presentations. ILACSD is true to their mission when they include words like “example” and “actively conserve.” My favorite part of the job is interacting with students during our classroom and assembly education programs. In the past, I had participated regularly in ILACSD cleanups, but had no idea that they had an education component, so I have had a lot to learn!
You might be like me and know a lot about ILACSD’s cleanups but aren’t as familiar with our education programs. ILACSD has 17 different education programs catering to students from kindergarten to 12th grade. We are fortunate enough to partner with agencies and organizations throughout San Diego, so most of our programs are free!
Students love to learn with our EnviroScape watershed model!
Last year, we presented over 500 programs to a total of 30,835 students. PHEW! Obviously, one person can’t do all of that work, so we have an EDventurous Education Department made up of 5 people: our Director, Samantha, Environmental Educator, Monica, part-time Educators, Erin and Kate, and me! Each day, we go out to schools all over San Diego County to teach students about the environment. (You can learn more about the whole ILACSD team here)
Our programs typically span an hour and, depending on the program, content ranges from conservation to watersheds. If you are teaching about recycling, we gotcha. Pollution? No problem! Landfills? Don’t fill up your schedule. I could go on, but basically, our programs cover a range of subjects that are current and relevant to rural and urban San Diego. In the past month, I have been in all corners of the County, from Boulevard, San Ysidro, Julian, to Oceanside; the environments and demographics change considerably, but I am always greeted by the same enthusiasm because everyone loves a clean San Diego.
If you are interested in or have questions about our programs, don’t hesitate to call me at 619.704.2777 or email at ebjorkquist@cleansd.org. I look forward to hearing from you!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Marketing Intern, Brian McComb, and continues our theme from yesterday on how you can protect our local waterways.
As this summer has given us one of the worst droughts in recent US history, coupled with the ongoing plague of droughts in Africa and Eastern Europe, there is perhaps no better a time to focus on water!
So do you know where your water comes from? Chances are you are actually sipping on water that came from your local river or stream. In fact American Rivers – a leading organization working to protect and restore the nation’s rivers and streams – estimates that almost 65% of drinking water across the United States comes from rivers and streams. Unfortunately they also estimate that nearly 40% of all rivers and streams in the U.S. are too polluted for even fishing or swimming.
So what is a watershed? Well our rivers and streams are only the most visible part of a much larger system, a system that connects our land to our water in ways we don’t usually realize. So as water becomes more and more important to our world’s ever-expanding population, the protection of watersheds becomes an ever more pressing matter.
Okay, so then what is a watershed? In essence, a watershed is the area of land where all the water (whether falling as rain or pumped out of the ground) eventually drains towards, meanders through, or somehow filters back to collect and replenish a common water source. It’s a swath of topography that contributes to a common water table, and it relies completely upon itself to sustain the water supply.
Watershed In Action
One of the important things to realize about watersheds, is that they include large areas of land around a visible water sources. Even if you are miles away from the nearest stream, what you do to the land in your area can still have a huge impact on the water. Chemicals dumped on desert rocks can seep through the ground and enter the same aquifer that feeds a far away stream. Garbage tossed into a seemingly dry gully can be swept away when a rare rainstorm turns that gully into short-lived class IV white water rapids. The point is, although trash and debris might be tossed far away from a water source and are no longer in your “backyard,” that debris may still end up contaminating your tap water.
Now not all watersheds are created equal. Some watersheds may feed into lakes, while others drain into a system of streams and rivers that eventually end up in the ocean. Some watersheds may cover little more than a hundred miles total (i.e. the San Diego watershed), while others (like the Mississippi watershed system) can span hundreds of thousands of miles.
Mississippi River Watershed
Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes across the world and are not limited by state or national boundaries. In the continental US alone there are over 2,100 watersheds. Though there are larger and smaller watersheds, no watershed is too large to be impervious to human harm.
Watersheds are extremely important to our daily lives as well as our future. To learn more about watersheds, check out resources like water.epa.gov.
Also, through I Love A Clean San Diego’s High School Watershed Education Program, we offer FREE watershed presentations to high schools within the City of San Diego and the unincorporated areas of the County of San Diego.
Our standards-based presentations focus on local watersheds and how pollution affects human health, as well as the health of local ecosystems. Help us keep our watersheds clean and healthy and empower students to be environmental stewards in their communities. These presentations are flexible to best fit your school’s schedule – schedule just a few classes or an entire day.
For more information or to schedule a presentation for your organization or club, please contact our Education Coordinator, Erika, at ebjorkquist@cleansd.org!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Community Events Intern, Taylor Goelz!
Now that the month of October is over with its cleanups every weekend, we in the office can take a little breather, but not for long! As we mentioned last week, I Love A Clean San Diego hosted two of the Tijuana River Action Month Cleanups (TRAM) during October. Last weekend at the final TRAM Cleanup, along with clearing the Tijuana Watershed of 278 tires and an entire dumpster full of trash, some volunteers participated in our StormDrainStencilingProgram. This volunteer program is so important to the City of San Diego because it helps raise awareness about how you can prevent trash from flowing down stream and polluting our beautiful ocean. We promote Storm Drain Stenciling even more around this time of year because it’s just before the winter rains come in and wash all of the debris and pollutants from our day-to-day activities into local waterways and the ocean.
Not many people know that there is a HUGE difference between sewer pipes, like the pipes in your home, and storm drains, a common sight on city streets. Anything that goes into a sewer first goes to a sewer treatment facility where it’s treated before going into the ocean. On the other hand, all the trash, runoff and debris that goes into storm drains isn’t treated, it just goes straight into the ocean as is! Not only does all of this trash in the ocean make a day at the beach less fun, but it also threatens human health and endangers wildlife. You may think that the majority of the trash in the ocean comes from people enjoying a day at the beach, but up to 80% of the pollutants and litter that is found in the ocean came from inland sources and washed down to the ocean via storm drains.
While this is a serious problem, ILACSD and Think Blue, the City of San Diego Storm Water and Transportation Department have a very easy, and fun, way to make sure people know the connection between ocean pollution and storm drains, Storm Drain Stenciling! The premise is simple: you volunteer to go around and stencil a bilingual message on top of a storm drain to create a visible reminder to let people know that anything they dump here will all go straight to our ocean backyard.
To find out more about this unique volunteer program and to schedule a time to pick up a stenciling kit, you can email volunteers@cleansd.org or call us at 619-291-0103. You will need a $25 deposit (cash or check only please) that is entirely refundable if you take good care of the kits and return them in good shape! So here’s a call to arms for all you artistic environmentalists out there, Storm Drain Stenciling is a great way to get the word out about the connection between local waterways and the ocean. Happy stenciling!
Update: with the addition of our last cleanup of the month, sponsored by Beckman Coulter, the grand total for October is 36,000 pounds of trash and debris!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Community Events Coordinator, Lexi Ambrogi!
If you’ve visited the I Love A Clean San Diego office in the past month, there’s a good chance you’ve had to navigate your way through towering stacks of buckets or gotten a good laugh at the mountain of boxes at my desk. Since Coastal Cleanup Day, the ILACSD Community Events department hasn’t had much of a breather—we’ve hosted a cleanup every single weekend in October! Here’s an update on what we’ve been up to.
This month, we co-hosted two cleanups alongside our friends at WiLDCOAST. These events were part of Tijuana River Action Month, a bi-national effort to clean up and protect the Tijuana watershed. We chose locations that are in a particularly high-risk location for debris collection. This area of San Diego lies on a floodplain, and trash from both sides of the border washes into this part of the Tijuana River Valley. Our mission was to remove as much of this trash as possible from the surrounding trails before the winter rains wash it out to the Pacific, where it would be harmful—even deadly—to marine life.
Between these two cleanups, our amazing volunteers pulled 7,940 pounds of trash and 12,660 of recyclables! Trust me, if you want an excuse to skip the gym on a Saturday morning, just come to one of our cleanups. Our volunteers filled up an entire dumpster this weekend in just over two hours. We collected 100 tires from the first TRAM cleanup and another 280 this past weekend—seriously impressive.
We had a fun side project at last weekend’s event; some volunteers elected to participate in Storm Drain Stenciling Day, a program that’s available year-round to ILACSD volunteers thanks to the City of San Diego’s Think Blue. We gave volunteers a stencil with a stormwater pollution prevention message (“No dumping—goes to ocean”), some paint, and a map, and they were off on a treasure hunt around the neighborhoods, looking for drains to mark.
Two weeks ago, ILACSD and the City of Chula Vista hosted the 10th Annual Beautify Chula Vista Dayat four sites throughout the city. 600 volunteers collected 4,200 pounds of trash and recyclables! They also wiped out graffiti and removed 8,700 pounds of invasive plants from the trails.
Up next on our schedule is a cleanup in Ramona in conjunction with America Recycles Day on November 15 which we are hosting with the County of San Diego. This nationwide event from our friends at Keep America Beautiful gets bigger every year, and we’d love to see you join us for this creek cleanup in a beautiful part of San Diego County. You can email me at lambrogi@cleansd.org to get involved. Hope to see you there!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Marketing Intern, Brian McComb!
When Charles Hansen reached out to I Love A Clean San Diego and asked if we’d let him volunteer his photography services on Coastal Cleanup Day, there was only one answer we could think of. Ja! (that’s Norwegian for “yes”)
Charles has been a professional photographer for just about as long as we’ve been helping clean up San Diego. Leaving his City Heights neighborhood in 1958 to join the Navy and attend their photography school, Chuck has been a using his picture taking talents ever since.
As he browsed our website, trying to decide where to volunteer for Coastal Cleanup Day, he noticed a lack of photos of the City Heights area. He wasn’t sure why this was so, but thought maybe the volunteers lacked the proper access and equipment. His mind was made up, and he wrote I Love A Clean San Diego asking for approval for a photography project highlighting inland cleanup sites in City Heights.
Going over his work in the days after Coastal Cleanup Day, Charles decided to look through the years of 47th Street Canyon group photos on Picasa. “I recognized many faces on those pages going back many years from my recent shoot. I was deeply impressed with the devotion of these folks!”
Here’s a bit more of what Chuck had to say about the City Heights cleanup:
Q: Why did you volunteer for Coastal Cleanup Day this year?
A: I volunteered for CCD because I wanted to make a contribution to my community. I felt that my time could be best served by participating in this area. I also own a rental house in that area, it is the house that I lived in from 1948-1957.
Q: Did you notice anything interesting at the cleanup sites?
A: I was impressed with the appearance of the project canyons. They are very clean and cared for. There is good community spirit there. These were the same canyons that I roamed as a youth.
A Liquid-Cooled Cleaning Machine
Q: What do you think was your biggest challenge during this project?
A: Every event has many different challenges. On this day the heat was a major factor for me.
Q: Which is your favorite photo from Coastal Cleanup Day?
A: My favorite photos are of the man dousing himself with water and the young girls with the dimples and charming smiles. I also love the group photos.
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Marketing Intern, Brian McComb!
Okay, the poundage has been tabulated, the registration forms summed up. Our sunburns have been nursed and the totals are finally in! Before we give you all the glorious details you crave, let’s all promise to recognize some of the more intensive endeavors that came about on this year’s Coastal Cleanup Day. After the numbers, be sure to check out the rundown of all the special projects that were able to undertaken thanks to Lowe’s!
Now without further ado, here are the fruits of your labor from Coastal Cleanup Day on September 15th, 2012.
DRUM ROLL PLEASE! Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble (okay, maybe a little ado)…
Through your combined efforts at 88 different cleanup sitesacross San Diego County, this year 7,200 volunteers worked together to remove 126,000 lbs of trash and debris in just 3 hours time!
Volunteers found more than just bottles and cans!
Holy monkeys that’s a lot of poundage! The best part is, this actually is less trash than we saw last year. Translation? Your hard work is making a big difference right here in your own backyard, we are starting to see less trash year after year! You never know what you are going to find at cleanup events like this, some of the more of unusual items reported by volunteers this year included an entire trash bag full of popcorn, a bubblegum machine, and even a brand new TV.
More than just picking up trash.
Now here is where you promised to pay attention. Many of you know that you were out there doing way more than just picking up trash. Volunteers removed graffiti, built trails, mulched, planted trees and other native species and removed invasive plant species at the following locations. These fantastic projects were made possible by a grant from Lowe’s through Keep America Beautiful and truly transformed the local landscape:
San Dieguito Lagoon
Manzanita Canyon – Volunteers also provided maintenance of the firebreak between the canyon and local homes. Cooper Canyon
Serra Mesa, Library Canyon and Serra Mesa Recreation Center
Clairemont, Mount Etna Canyon
Hillcrest, Marston Canyon
Chollas Creek at 54th Street
Lakeside, Lindo Lake
National City, Paradise Creek – Restoration of the wetlands and upland creek bed. Chula Vista, Salt Creek Park
Phew, that was a lot of work! Now there might not be a lot that is great about knocking out work in the 100-degree heat, but we are already starting to see the benefits of all your efforts! Let’s keep winning this battle, and move ever closer to a waste free San Diego!
Captain Wetiquette, ILACSD’s clean water mascot, was so happy at CCD!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Marketing Intern, Brian McComb!
I Love A Clean San Diego has deep roots, helping to make and keep San Diego clean for many a decade. As we push ever closer to the 60th anniversary of our passionate organization, ILACSD takes a journey back in time to see how everything came about. Here’s a thoughtful look back at some of the events that have shaped our history…
Inception
To find our organization’s launch point, we turn the hands of time backwards all the way to the year 1954. Although the year might be most famous for the Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio wedding or for the 30-minute documentary, “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy,” by newsman Edward Murrow, San Diego was beginning to make some history of its own.
Fueled by the aviation industry during WWII, growth in San Diego had surged during the two prior decades. As communities grew across much of the County, litter emerged as a large and pressing problem. The County and City responded with the creation of the “San Diego City and County War Against Litter Committee”, ILACSD’s first incarnation.
WAR
litter makes headlines
In 1960, the lead up to the official “War Against Litter Year” all started with a frustrated phone call…
On the afternoon of Wednesday September 28th, 1960, “John Cook phoned the Evening Tribune and reported that a trash can on Broadway near 7th Avenue was overflowing onto the sidewalk. Cook, of a jewelry store at 647 Broadway, said the can had been overflowing for several days.”
San Diego’s litter and subsequent frustration had hit critical mass, and outcry for a full on anti-litter campaign began to gain traction.
“War Against Litter Year”
At the end of November of that year county law officers had met with anti-litter committee officials to map a uniform litter code to bring about effective enforcement in combating the litter problem.
The San Diego Police department, the California Highway Patrol, and most of the 11 incorporated cities within the county were represented at the meeting.
By the end of the year a full-fledged “War Against Litter” campaign had been launched, and there were plans to kick off the new year right. An official resolution proclaiming the week of January 14, 1961 as “War Against Litter Week” and the year of 1961 as “War Against Litter Year” had been passed and adopted by the Board of Supervisors of the County of San Diego.
The year would also saw the introduction of the organization’s first mascot, Pelican Pete, and the decade would see many more doctrines of war.
Promoting Plastic Bags?
Pelican Pete Says…
Ironically, starting in 1962 the War Against Litter Committee actually encouraged people to carry plastic ‘litter-bags’ in their cars.
At the time, paper litter was a far larger problem than the plastic litter we see today. Oh how the times have changed.
Everyone’s a Critic
Contrasting the public support for a litter war, on May 19th, 1963 there was an article published in the San Diego Union about the unsightly trash receptacles in Horton Plaza. The dean of USC’s architecture program is quoted singling out the green trash cans in the plaza as “a disgrace,” and an example of the “woeful condition of the heart of San Diego.”
everyone’s a critic
Apparently everyone’s a critic, as pointed out by Park Director Les Earnest, quoted in the article saying “trash barrels are always a problem… If we took them out, people would complain. If we leave them in, someone complains.”
Although you can’t please everyone all of the time, apparently we can please the President of the United States. In 1968 the War Against Litter Committee was commended by President Lyndon B. Johnson for partnerships and beautification efforts at the border in San Ysidro.
SLOBB & I Love A Clean San Diego
The 1970s saw the first glimmer of our current name. Although board members and staff had developed the new slogan “Stop Littering Our Bays and Beaches” (or SLOBB for short), the phrase “I Love A Clean San Diego” also started showing up in literature.
In 1970 the SLOBB campaign won numerous awards and even spawned a Miss SLOBB pageant. At the time, SLOBB was far more prevalent for the organization’s anti-litter campaign. However in 1980 the slogan “I Love A Clean San Diego” became incorporated into the organization’s new name, as the former “War Against Litter Committee” officially became “I Love A Clean San Diego County.”
Welcome to Modernity
Keeping America Beautiful
In 1989, ILACSDC merges with the San Diego Ecology Center, joining two leading environmental organizations together and giving rise to our current form. The rise in outreach and connectivity expanded rapidly, and later that year ILACSDC participated in their first ever Coastal Cleanup Day.
In 1995 ILACSDC received the Excellence in Solid Waste Education award from the Solid Waste Association of North America. Also during this year, the organization officially shortened its name from “I Love A Clean San Diego County” to “I Love A Clean San Diego” (ILACSD).
Blasting through the Millennium
In 2003 ILACSD takes a page out of the history books during Earth Month, organizing its first large-scale countywide cleanup. The resulting “Creek to Bay” cleanup was a resounding success with almost 2,000 volunteers removing 25,000 pounds of debris. The cleanup has since become an annual event across San Diego County.
I Love A Clean San Diego is awarded with a proclamation from the City of Chula Vista in 2007, recognizing its coordination of the annual Beautify Chula Vista Day. The event boasted close to 1,000 volunteers and was the most successful in history. As a Keep America Beautiful affiliate, ILACSD received the President’s Circle Recognition Award for achieving all standards of excellence as an affiliate.
WasteFreeSD.org
WastFreeSD.org
As ILACSD gets ever more connected, in 2009 they record nearly 21,000 requests for waste items made to the innovative new one-stop recycling resource, WasteFreeSD.org. The valuable resource diverts immeasurable waste from San Diego’s already over extended landfills, and prevents incidents of illegal dumping that contaminates our community.
2012
Coastal Cleanup Day
On September 15th of 2012, I Love A Clean San Diego headed up the 28th annual Coastal Cleanup Day. I Love A Clean San Diego had been co-coordinating Coastal Cleanup Day in San Diego for 10 years, but this year took on the event as the sole coordinator making ILACSD the go-to organization for countywide cleanup events. This year’s Coastal Cleanup Day event had astounding turnouts, seeing over 7,200 volunteers collect over 121,000 lbs. of waste across 88 different cleanup sites in San Diego County.
Pressing On
I Love A Clean San Diego, through its many incarnations, has seen a lot of litter over the years. Through the hard work and dedication of its volunteers and staff, the organization has been able to gain the upper hand in many of the county’s most visible areas. We have matured and developed a lot since 1954, and our constant vigilance has allowed us to continue to expand our efforts, reaching all parts of San Diego County. The war is far from over however, and our fight against litter takes us further inland every year.
During the month of October, we set our sights southward towards our next biggest obstacle. South San Diego County seems to be a litter stronghold, a haven that harbors large and unpredictable cleanups. Although this could be considered the frontlines in our war against litter, this remains an area where volunteerism has dwindled in the past. We are excited to once again partner with Wildcoast for October’s Tijuana River Action Month.
Become part of ILACSD’s rich history by volunteering at one of our multiple TRAM cleanups on October 6th and October 20th, or take part in Beautify Chula Vista Day on October 13th! Visit our website to find out more, and join is in our mission to keep San Diego beautiful!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Community Events Coordinator, Lexi Ambrogi!
Have you ever found yourself at a park or beach and felt helpless in the battle against litter? Well, thanks to a new program from I Love A Clean San Diego, you can take action by grabbing a trash bag and glove from our new Do-It-Yourself cleanup receptacles!
This exciting pilot effort, an extension of our popular Adopt-A-Beach program, is the first of its kind in California. This week, ILACSD unveiled its custom-designed DIY cleanup receptacles, which are silver cylinders stocked with trash bags and gloves so that community members can clean up litter right when they see it. There are 3 receptacles in Mission Bay—at De Anza Cove, Playa Pacifica, and Crown Point Shores—and we hope to get more into the community soon. Special thanks to the California Coastal Commission for providing the funding to get this project off the ground!
Our friends at the San Diego Park and Recreation Department helped us to install these receptacles at popular barbecue and recreation gazebos. We often hear from volunteers who say they try to pick up after others while out in the community. This DIY program will make it easy and convenient for anyone to make a difference in preventing harmful litter from making its way to the Pacific Ocean.
We hope to see some of you taking action in Mission Bay soon!
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Outreach Intern, Taylor!
This was taken just a few weeks ago at one of the TRAM cleanup sites.
Here in the I Love A Clean San Diego office, we’re fresh off the excitement and success of Coastal Cleanup Day, but we’re also gearing up for our next series of events, the 3rd annual Tijuana River Action Month (TRAM) Cleanups. TRAM is a bi-national effort that takes place down near the border; there will be cleanups on both sides of the border during this month, how cool is that!
ILACSD, along with the Tijuana River Action Network (TRAN) and the help of many other invaluable partners, have two events scheduled during the month of October, one on October 6th at Effie May Trail and one on October 20th near Dairy Mart Road and Camino de la Plaza, both along the notoriously messy Tijuana Watershed. As usual, ILACSD will be bringing all the necessary supplies, but the BYOB (bring your own bucket) policy is still in full swing!
Although the TRAM cleanups aren’t our biggest events of the year, (it’s hard to beat 7,200 volunteers for Coastal Cleanup Day!) they are maybe the most important. The Tijuana Watershed is consistently filled with tons of trash, from plastic debris like food containers, bleach bottles, and plastic utensils, to the most consistently found item, tires.
You may be asking why October has been chosen for the honor of being christened Tijuana River Action Month and the answer is super simple, rain! TRAN wants to get these areas cleaned up before the winter rains come to San Diego and send all of the trash into our beautiful Pacific Ocean. If not for the hard work of ILACSD’s volunteers, all of those plastics, pieces of Styrofoam and tires would go straight into the ocean, our backyard and playground!
As you can see from the pictures taken just a few weeks ago at the October 20th site, this area desperately needs our help and our hands! Typically, volunteers are more hesitant to go down near the border to participate in a cleanup because of the distance and many other factors. Nevertheless, it’s because of these challenges that this area needs the most help. Last year at these two events, 63,476 pounds of trash and 351 tires were removed; if this much good was done last year with a little over 2,500 volunteers, think of all the good we could do this year if we had even more helping hands!
While cleaning up the Tijuana Watershed is the star of the day, that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing to do while down at the border on October 6th or the 20th. For example, on October 6th, the Audubon Society and REI will be leading nature walks through the different trails throughout Effie May Trail. Then on the 20th, ILACSD along with Think Blue, the City of Sand Diego’s storm water pollution prevention division, will be stenciling storm drains near our Dairy Mart Road site to let people know that anything this put down the drains here go straight into the ocean. Finally, as a reward to our volunteers after each TRAM event there will be a raffle of fabulous prizes! I hope you decide to come out to one of the TRAM events to give the Tijuana Watershed some much need TLC!
Please take a moment to do these quick and easy steps to help ILACSD win this thing!
