Gleaning a Creek, Setting an Example : Earth Day: More than 100 children, parents, grandparents, City Council members and firefighters join a cleanup in Orange.

Cleaning up Santiago Creek has become sort of an Earth Day tradition for Colin and Brenden Smith. The brothers spent the 20th anniversary of Earth Day last year gathering discarded papers and bottles in the usually dry creek bed near their northern Santa Ana home.

This year, spurred by a “Clean Up Santiago Creek” flyer, their whole family plied a 2-mile stretch from Orange to Santa Ana, stuffing everything from old trousers and shoes to shards of glass in trash sacks.

“We live by the creek, and we like it to look good,” said Brenden, 14, as the licorice smell of wild anise wafted by.

The Smith brothers were among more than 100 children, parents, grandparents, City Council members, firefighters and just plain folks who turned out Saturday for the cleanup, one of a series of environmentally oriented events and exhibits planned this weekend to celebrate Earth Day.

This cleanup was not confined to sprucing up a tattered bit of paradise. It was part of the Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance’s campaign to reclaim as parkland a 37-acre former golf course, where a developer wants to build 100 homes.

The alliance is also hoping to persuade local governments to preserve the entire 12-mile length of Santiago Creek, which winds from Irvine Lake down the foothills and under freeways, street overpasses and rail bridges in the heart of the county’s urban core.

Alliance founder Howard DeCruyenaere, a 31-year-old photographer from Orange, said: “I look at it as one unit, a connector for people, for wildlife, trees and birds--a place of nature right in the middle of the city. We need a place of quiet in the middle of these freeways and all this development.”

To look at Saturday’s haul, Santiago Creek might seem more a local dumping ground. There were a rusted motorcycle frame, a credit-card registration machine, plastic sprinkler piping, a truck jack, old oil drums, shopping carts, assorted carpets, mattresses and just plain trash.

Even after the most visible debris had been sacked and toted out, much of the creek remained a rock-strewn channel overgrown with tangled thickets of timber bamboo, pepper-tree shoots and weeds.

But every so often the wild undergrowth gives way to an oasis of green, such as the six parks that straddle Santiago Creek along its length. Alliance members say another oasis is the old Santiago Golf Course, a nine-hole surface bordering Tustin Avenue that winds down along the creek bed under a blanket of tall old sycamore and coastal live oak trees.

Last year, alliance members persuaded the Orange City Council to reject a plan to develop a commercial shopping strip and 160 homes at the old golf course, the last large tract available for development in central Orange.

The City Council also gave the alliance $10,000, which was used to hire a Denver consulting firm to explore ways to develop the land as a park and help turn the entire creek into a viable park and wildlife corridor.

But the development partnership of Burnett-Ehline Co./William Lyon Co. is now at work on plans for a 100-home community at the privately owned site. Part of the plan for the flood zone would be to divert any water flowing down the creek into three large concrete pipes underneath the property, DeCruyenaere said.

The developer has indicated that if the city and the alliance want the land for park space, they will have to buy it. An independent appraiser has estimated it would cost about $6.75 million.

“We’re looking into grants and all kinds of local, state and federal funds to buy the land,” DeCruyenaere said.

Other alliance members have even suggested putting a bond measure on the ballot to raise money for the park’s development.

Park supporters hope “to get the money to buy the land,” said alliance member Mary Haupt of Santa Ana as she watched her husband scour the bushes for trash. “This is very important, because there is a real shortage of parkland, especially in the city of Orange.”

Down in the creek bed, Santa Ana City Councilman Robert L. Richardson surveyed the cleanup efforts with city parks and recreation workers Ron Ono and Paul Johnson.

“We’re just here to show support for the Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance,” Richardson said.

EARTH DAY HAPPENINGS

Earth Day events ranging from artwork to tree planting to a little recycling will be offered throughout Orange County today.

In Anaheim, a free city-sponsored “Let’s Make a Difference” Environmental Faire will be held from noon until 4 p.m. at Peralta Canyon Park, 115 N. Pinney Drive. Music, crafts and refreshments will be offered along with environmental information booths and pine seedlings.

In Upper Newport Bay, the state Fish and Game Department will offer fishing seminars, animal demonstrations, kelp pressing and tree plantings from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Big Canyon parking area on Back Bay Drive. Nature tours will be given every 30 minutes.

In Aliso Viejo, the Museum of Natural History and Science of Orange County will combine art with nature in workshops for children ages 5 to 12. The workshops are free with admission to the museum, 150 Columbia St.

In Costa Mesa, the Nordstrom Department Store will continue its recycling effort, accepting recyclable aluminum cans, glass, plastic and paper products at its South Coast Plaza parking lot at Sunflower Avenue and Bear Street from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Money from the recycling will be used to buy trees for county parks.