San Antonio River awash in trash; cleanup event planned for Friday

SAN ANTONIO — When storm water rushed down the San Antonio River channel Monday, it brought an unwelcome visitor:  tons of trash.

There are backpacks and discarded shoes, beer cans and used motor oil jugs, kids toys and car parts, all jumbled and tossed with thousands of pounds of organic matter that is a natural part of the environment.

People who care about this naturally beautiful play place, where a hiking trail snakes alongside the banks, say it’s time for everyone to work together to toss the trash out of the system.

Charles Blank is with River Aid San Antonio (RASA). His group has been recruiting volunteers and staging clean up events for about three years.

Touring one of the bleakest areas, where garbage has accumulated just below Espada Dam, Blank said “It’s cataclysmic and the fog today really helps get that across. Every one of our waterways is screaming out for help right now.”

Blank called the depressed landscape dystopian, saying “It’s alarming! It shows you how close we are to complete pollution saturation of our waterways at any given time.”

Celebrating the success his band of volunteers has been experiencing, Blank said “When you consider the collective impact of 40 or 60 or maybe 80 random individuals with no affiliation coming down to work for three hours?  They are one.”  

Blank said Saturday morning the group will be working in the area just downstream from the dam in Espada Park.

“This Saturday we will be going south from the dam, as it is typically the worst stretch because the watershed opens up and stays real low so all the vegetation attracts and traps all the trash, so we’re probably going to pull a couple of tons (of trash),” Blank said.    

RASA stages regular cleanups on the San Antonio River and many tributaries in all sections of the city.  

Additionally, they are hosting the 29th annual Basura Bash on Feb. 17. It is an event where thousands of volunteers turn out for a work session on the local streams that flow into the San Antonio River.

Blank said one of the most attractive features of the effort is that nobody has to travel very far to find a place to make an impact.

“In your very own neighborhood you can take care of the waterway closest to you, so you can protect what’s yours, your social capital that we have,” Blank said, adding “This river, our natural areas?  It’s the most expensive thing I own, for sure. I think we all need to take better care of it.” 

Blank said the accumulation of debris is not acceptable, “It’s heartbreaking to even see the houseless community living on the creeks in what amounts to squalor with debris all around them, and then you see a bird picking through Styrofoam and it hits home even harder. We need to do something about this problem.”

Blank said volunteers of all ages are welcome.

“Y’all come down, please, because with these spring time rains, this is about as bad as it gets and if we don’t act quickly then this stuff gets down to the gulf and it’s very, very expensive to get out of our environment,” Blank said, adding “Could you really put a dollar amount on the river, for the River City?  I don’t think so. It would be in the trillions.”

Tommy Mitchell is the Watershed and Park Operations Manager for the San Antonio River Authority. Having been supervising cleanup operations for years, Mitchell said it’s a huge investment.

“It’s about $100,000 annually and we roughly pick up about 200,000 pounds of trash and floatables a year along the San Antonio River,” Mitchell said.

With regard to the current onslaught of garbage, Mitchell said “It’s been a little while since we’ve had a rain like this so we’re really getting a lot of trash and a lot of floatables that has been washed down into the river,” adding “It’s a significant amount this time to be quite honest with you, due to the lack of rain we have received recently.”

Mitchell said because the trails along the river are so popular, making sure the walkways are safe is an important priority.

“Our initial response is obviously keep the trail safe and usable so they will come in and remove all the silt and sediment that accumulates, and then we will transition right back and focus on the trash,” Mitchell said. 

Mitchell praised volunteer groups like RASA, saying it would be great if more people took an active role in keeping the river healthy.

“Be a River Warrior! Be a valuable steward to the most valuable resource that we have right here in the heart of downtown,” Mitchell said.

With regard to stopping the pollution before it starts, Mitchell said “We all play a part in it. We see it from the residential side.  We see it in parking lots. We all play some role in it.”

“‘Don’t let litter trash your river’ is our slogan at the San Antonio River Authority and it’s just so important to keep teaching that and show that and one way to do that is volunteer and assist with the removal of the trash we’ve seen. 

Click here to sign up to participate in the 29th annual Basura Bash waterway cleanup event. 

Tap here to sign up to be a River Warrior. 

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