Some Good, Clean Fun

On Orange County’s sunbathed shores Saturday, legions of youngsters engaged in battle with The Enemy.

They chased down soda cans, McDonald’s wrappers, flip tops, empty sun block tubes. And while their victory over beach litter may be short-lived, it was sweet just the same.

Saturday was Coastal Cleanup Day, and all along the 1,100-mile California coast, volunteers young and old worked to make small swaths of sand and earth a little cleaner.

In fact, three boys from the same Laguna Niguel street looked positively triumphant as they returned from scouring Salt Creek Beach Park, brandishing bright yellow pickup sticks and bulging blue plastic trash bags.

After poring over the sands for cigarette butts and bottle tops, the threesome was quick to denounce the scourge of litter.

“Keep your beach clean. If you can’t keep it clean, don’t come,” warned a stern Seth Hall, 7, a second-grade student at George L. White Elementary School.

Salt Creek was just one of hundreds of spots along the state’s coast where an estimated 48,000 volunteers picked up trash and debris as part of the state Coastal Commission’s 13th annual Cleanup Day.

At Salt Creek shortly after noon, organizer Mark Patrick scanned the penciled numbers on his clipboard, concluding that more than 200 volunteers had retrieved about 300 pounds of trash and 70 pounds of recyclables.

“A pound of trash per person,” said county employee Patrick, assistant coordinator for Cleanup Day in the county.

His daughter, Chloe Patrick, 5, joined in the Salt Creek cleanup.

“I found a piece of a rubber fish. And a cigarette. And a straw,” she shyly told her father.

Three generations of the McMorran family strolled along the crowded beach with a blue bag stuffed with trash.

They found about 20 pounds in an hour, including broken glass, beer bottles “and a lot of cigarette butts,” said Krista McMorran, 27, of Mission Viejo, a teacher at George L. White Elementary.

She was assisted by her daughter, Kaitlyn McMorran, 4, who proudly reported finding one cigarette.

Cleanup Day veterans are always on the lookout for unusual items. At Salt Creek, for example, they found a fire extinguisher.

Around the state, more peculiar items surfaced: a bag of human hair, a bowling ball, a jar of pickled pigs’ feet. Volunteers working on the shores of San Francisco Bay found a jar containing two voodoo dolls and a photograph.

In all, the cleanup targeted 650 miles of shoreline, including Lake Tahoe, the American River and other rivers and creeks.

This year’s event was presented by Brita Water Filtration systems, and each volunteer was offered a free Brita water pitcher.

Statewide, the cleanup collected 435,353 pounds of trash and 48,194 pounds of recyclable items, according to a 6 p.m. tally from the Coastal Commission’s San Francisco headquarters.

In Orange County, totals showed that 4,052 volunteers picked up 41,114 pounds of trash and 4,211 pounds of recyclables, said Chris Parry, Coastal Commission director of public education.

And at Salt Creek, the pile of blue plastic bags grew taller and taller as the morning progressed.

Said Senior Park Ranger Mary Excell: “What it says is that we have to be aware that what we take to the beach, we have to take back.”