Volunteers Clear Beaches of Trash

It was a feeling of revulsion that motivated Rachel Coleman, 17, to spend Sunday afternoon scouring San Buenaventura State Beach for pieces of plastic, white foam cups and paper.

“The beaches are so dirty, it’s disgusting,” said the Camarillo teen-ager, one of about 40 people who participated in a cleanup sponsored by a local environmental group. “All this pollution and no one cares. Someone’s got to do something about it.”

Wearing plastic surgeon’s gloves and armed with large black trash bags, volunteers picked the garbage from piles of wood debris that has washed onto the beaches during recent storms.

“We have seven years of drought where everything we’ve dumped on the ground is now coming out to sea,” cleanup organizer Alan Godley told volunteers before they dispersed around the beach near San Jon Road.

Godley heads Blue Dolphin Co. in Ventura, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute that regularly sponsors cleanups on local beaches.

The Ventura County Surfrider Foundation also helped organize Sunday’s effort.

State workers will use bulldozers to clear the debris that washed onto the beaches from the Ventura River and various storm drains, Godley said.

Having residents volunteer to pick up plastic and other trash accomplishes more than just getting beaches clean, he said.

“We are creating a vehicle for responsibility and stewardship,” Godley said, adding that volunteers become aware of their role in keeping the environment clean.

Besides making the beaches more pleasant for people, participants in Sunday’s cleanup may have saved the lives of some sea turtles or other marine life, said James N. Smith, 29, a La Conchita resident active with the Earth Island Institute.

Colorful pieces of toy balloons are particularly dangerous because sea animals may mistake the floating pieces of rubber for jellyfish, he said.

“Turtles and other creatures eat it,” Smith said. “It gets caught in their system and has been known to either suffocate them or block the valve that goes into their stomach. They starve to death.”