By Brendan P. Bartholomew
Tens of thousands of volunteers around the state and on the Peninsula
will descend upon local beaches, San Francisco Bay shorelines and
inland waterways on Saturday morning to participate in the 30th annual
California Coastal Cleanup Day.
Beginning at 9 a.m., participants will scour the areas until noon,
removing debris and litter from 850 sites across California, 30 of which
are in San Mateo County.
During last year's event, the volunteers removed about 750,000 pounds
of trash from around the state, approximately 25,000 pounds of which
came from San Mateo County sites.
San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program spokesman
Matt Fabry said that while municipalities have reduced environmental
impacts by enacting plastic bag and Styrofoam food container bans, as
well as installing filters to catch trash in local waterways, the annual
cleanup event is still crucial.
Plastic litter that is commonly retrieved during the cleanups does
not biodegrade, but breaks down into small pellets that absorb toxins
and are then eaten by marine wildlife, he noted. According to the
California Department of Public Health, seafood caught in San Francisco
Bay has been shown to contain such toxins, which include polychlorinated
biphenyls.
Pacifica is one community that has earned a reputation for hosting
some of the largest cleanups in the region in recent years, with last
year's event drawing between 1,000 and 1,300 volunteers, according to
San Mateo County Health System spokeswoman Robyn Thaw. The turnout at
Ryder Park in San Mateo may rival those numbers, as that location saw
about 1,000 voluznteers last year, Thaw noted.
Read more...
Submitted by Brendan Bartholomew
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