A deep cleaning for L.A. River

Seen from its banks, the Los Angeles River is familiar -- gripped on both sides by gray concrete.

But in this stretch, just southeast of Griffith Park, the river’s bottom isn’t paved over. It’s covered with dirt and smooth stones. Water trickles around islands of green trees, giving refuge to mallards and their ducklings.

Still, they live in spots littered with plastic bags, foam cups, beer bottles, spray paint cans and smashed shopping carts.

So on Saturday morning, more than 2,500 volunteers, most of them teenagers, showed up at the Glendale Narrows as part of a massive cleanup of the L.A. River.

Most of the helpers were members of the Pacific American Volunteer Assn., which brought in students from as far away as Camarillo and La Habra and has chapter clubs at dozens of middle and high schools in Southern California. About 500 were members of the Anahuak Youth Soccer Assn. in northeast Los Angeles.

Some of the teens squealed in disgust at the sight of the river. Others took on their mission with gusto.

Sergio Hernandez, 15, and his soccer teammates from Eagle Rock High School gingerly stepped on slippery stones to get to a dirt island in the middle of the shallow, slow-moving river.

There, sheltered by trees, lay a tiny stream flanked by thickets. Sergio’s friend, Andre Cousineau, 15, used a wooden stick to keep a foam cup from floating down the stream.

“I got it,” Sergio said, using his own tree branch to scoop the cup into a bulging plastic bag. It was already filled with a dirty blanket, soda and aerosol cans, and a potato chip bag.

“This bag is heavy,” he said, before leaving for the riverbank.

Some of Sergio’s friends stumbled at times, but they said the experience was fun.

“We have to help out the community,” said Juan Llano, 16, whose white T-shirt was grimy with remnants of leaves and dirt.

Just north, 10-year-old Jidam Lee of Placentia leaned over a concrete wall and used a metal claw to fish out white foam packing peanuts, one by one, from a wet drainage ditch.

“It’s messy,” said Jidam, poking the claw into the green muck below. “Eww! Monster yuck!” he said, after finding a slimy cloth.

Farther upstream, 16-year-old Tai Hyuknahn carried a bag of trash, while Ruby Choi, 16, and her 11-year-old brother, Ken, plucked litter out of the river.

“It stinks bad,” Tai said of the scent of moss wafting in the air. “It’s disgusting. The smell will get to you. I doubt fish could swim here.”

“This is better than the zoo,” Ruby replied.

Catherine Mims Yamaguchi, 47, of La Mirada was fascinated by the force of nature along the river.

“I didn’t know there was so much life here,” Yamaguchi said. “I thought it was a stagnant pool.”

For Dwight Taeza, 56, of Torrance, coming out Saturday was important, he said, because “I don’t like seeing rivers die.”

“I grew up in the Philippines, and as kids we would go to the river to play. But by the time I was a teenager, the river was almost dead,” Taeza said. “People don’t see the effects when rivers die until it’s too late.”

Sisters Becky and Liz Landeros said they wished there had been an even greater turnout.

The river is much worse south of the Glendale Narrows, where the sisters bicycle frequently, they said.

Heavy rains during the winter caused the river’s water level to rise, trapping litter in the trees “10 feet in the air,” said Becky Landeros, 19.

Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, an environmental group involved in coastal and groundwater quality advocacy, said the massive turnout was important for the environmental movement.

Now the Glendale Narrows demonstrates “what the river could be,” Gold said. “We want more of the river to look like this.”

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ron.lin@latimes.com