Volunteers Go Rollin’ Down River in Effort to Clean the Environment

A stretch of the San Gabriel River that flows along the eastern edge of Long Beach is a lot cleaner now, thanks to more than 100 volunteers who participated in the second annual “Rollin’ Down the River” program. Armed with rubber gloves and trash sacks, they picked up man-made debris along the channel as part of an Earth Day observance sponsored by the El Dorado Nature Center.

Steve Quamma, above, of Long Beach struggles to free a rusted pipe wedged among rocks where the concrete channel ends and the freshwater flow joins the tidal saltwater just north of the 405 Freeway overpass. Naturalist Juli Bilbia, right, separates recyclable material from debris that volunteers brought back to El Dorado Park. More than 80% of it was non-recyclable, she said, and a majority of that was plastic foam products.

“We found a couple of dead birds,” said Mary Blackburn, El Dorado Nature Center program director. “One had ingested Styrofoam and the other had fishing line wrapped around its neck.”