Dirty Job Draws Hundreds of Volunteers : Cleanup: About 700 people pitched in to help rid Upper Newport Bay of trash as part of statewide event.

James Goldenberg and his 16-year-old pal, Pontus Oberg, used to consider the Upper Newport Bay a primo windsurfing spot.

But they have long since beached their boards for health reasons.

“We had to stop because the bay’s getting pretty nasty,” said Goldenberg, 17, of Dover Shores. The Back Bay “was nice before, but it looks kind of terrible now.”

Faced with the herculean task of cleaning up the 752 acres of wetlands that make up much of the Upper Newport Bay, the teen-age friends and about 700 other volunteers combed through the marshy clumps of pickleweed and cordgrass for three hours on Saturday, trying to make a dent in the tons of garbage that have been deposited over the years.

The effort, appropriately called the Upper Newport Bay Cleanup Day, was held in conjunction with the sixth annual Adopt-A-Beach California Coastal Cleanup, sponsored by the California Coastal Commission.

Up and down the state’s 1,000 miles of coastline, thousands of people armed with blue and orange trash bags and tally sheets turned out at their favorite beach to pick up, analyze and catalogue the trash they encountered, the Coastal Commission said.

The purpose of the statewide project, which lasted from 9 a.m. to noon, was to raise awareness about the fragility of the California coastline and to instill a year-round habit of keeping the state’s beaches pristine, said Thomas Gwyn, chairman of the Coastal Commission.

“Californians love their coast,” Gwyn said in a prepared statement. “We want to care for it, not just on this day, but all year round.”

Coastal Commission officials said that last year’s event drew 10,000 children and adults who picked up more than 200,000 pounds of trash.

That was more than double the number of people who turned out in 1988, Coastal Commission officials said.

Figures for Saturday’s event were not be immediately available.

Those figures are a two-edged sword, said Coastal Commission spokesman Jack Liebster. On the one hand they show that a growing number of people are taking the time to make clean beaches a reality.

But on the other hand, “the cleanup statistics are a sad and obvious indicator that California continues to suffer from a plague of trash,” he wrote in a recent report.

The mountains of trash are catalogued, and used to help identify polluters and the type of trash being deposited into the ocean, Coastal Commission officials said. Accurately tallying the debris will also help foster new environmental legislation, county officials said.

Each year, because of careless dumping of trash, tens of thousands of marine mammals, birds and fish die from eating or becoming entangled in trash, the Coastal Commission reported. For instance, it is estimated that 30,000 northern fur seals die each year from entanglement with plastic and other floating garbage, according to the Coastal Commission.

In light of that, Orange County officials and organizations from San Clemente to Seal Beach joined the statewide environmental cleanup by recruiting about 3,000 volunteers to walk up and down the sand, picking up cigarette butts, soda cans, plastic foam products and other rubbish, said Marianne Excell, a County Harbors, Beaches and Parks spokeswoman and coordinator for the countywide effort.

“Overall, I think it was very successful,” Excell said. “The public really enjoys doing this and I definitely feel that it was great for preserving our resources and protecting our environment.”

Volunteers working at the various beaches agreed.

“This is a wonderful idea,” said Nadine Henning as she watched her 9-year-old daughter get a quick lesson on how to spot coin-sized bits of trash hidden in the sand at Huntington State Beach.

“This teaches my daughter environmental responsibility,” she said as organizer Warren Kirsch barked orders to the members of the Fountain Valley Girl Scout troop, who were mixing business with pleasure by playing a game called “100% Clean Up.”

“You have to teach them when they are young and give them good habits,” Henning said. “When you get older, it’s more of a struggle.”

Nearby, Huntington Beach resident Ernie Pellegrini, 27, and his girlfriend sifted through an ash-filled cement bonfire ring, picking up charred metal debris and fast-food wrappers.

He lamented the condition of Huntington Beach, which draws hundreds of thousands of tourists a year.

“I come to this beach all the time,” Pellegrini said. “It’s really disgusting to see all the trash. Every bit of trash ruins it for everyone.”