Years of volunteer cleanup work are making a visible difference in some Sacramento waterways, but recent challenges are making it harder to continue. <\/p>\n
River City Waterway Alliance is an all-volunteer organization that has removed millions of pounds of trash over the last three years, and they’re not done. But they could use some help right now. The group is running into tire trouble with their trash trailer. <\/p>\n
“We’re having a problem with nail punctures and screws and metals. They get in our tires and make flats,” said David Ingram, president of RCWA. <\/p>\n
The group has cleared out nearly 4 million pounds of trash over the last three years. But now, the very thing they’re trying to clean up is slowing them down. They use a magnet roller to pick up nails and metals before driving in the trucks to mitigate the problem, but it doesn’t always solve the problem. <\/p>\n
“I think we’re getting more because we’re taking the trailer, I’m filling it with thousands of pounds of trash and debris. A lot of times it’s wet and weighs a lot, and I think that’s really compacting down into the gravel and getting deeper down into some more buried metal, wire and screws,” said Ingram. <\/p>\n
RCWA is trying to bring back the natural beauty of our wetlands and riparian forests while also making sure the community stays safe. <\/p>\n
“These are needles that we found discarded around the parkway. We have four of them here, but we actually have 23 in total,” said Ingram, showing needles they’ve collected. <\/p>\n
Jugs hold more than 28,000 needles they’ve removed. <\/p>\n
“And they float so they end up all over the parkways, all over the waterways, creeks. Who knows how far downstream,” he said. <\/p>\n
The group wants to keep the cleanups going. And proof of success in their work comes in the form of nature. <\/p>\n
“We have seen a lot of birds coming back. When we started cleaning the area, one thing we noticed was there were no songbirds, no anything around,” said RCWA volunteer Lisa Sanchez. <\/p>\n
But now, they’ve seen mother ducks, nests, and were even visited by an egret during the interview. <\/p>\n
“We hear them! We see them too, that’s the difference,” said Sanchez. <\/p>\n
“We’re not finished, but we can kind of give that back to the neighborhood and say we’ve reclaimed this parkway for you, please come and enjoy it,” said Ingram. <\/p>\n
The big day of giving is this Thursday, if you’d like to donate to their cause. If not, they say they could always use more volunteers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Years of volunteer cleanup work are making a visible difference in some Sacramento waterways, but recent challenges are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-302159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}