Santa Maria preparing for community cleanup event in riverbed

The City of Santa Maria is looking to volunteers to help keep a valuable resource as clean as possible.

This weekend, on Saturday, September 29th, Central Coast Creek Day Cleanup will be held at several locations, including Santa Maria.

“The city for the first time is going to be a participant in that, so we’re encouraging people to come out on Saturday and help clean up the Santa Maria River,” said Santa Maria Utilities Director Shad Springer. “The focus for us is absolutely the riverbed. We want to clean up those areas where during the winter rains the water is going to flow and affect the water quality.”

From 9 a.m. to noon, volunteers are being asked to pitch in and help the effort to help preserve the important resource.

“Unfortunately, over time quite a bit of trash ends up in the riverbed and it’s an important source of drinking water and use for agriculture throughout the valley and it’s important that we keep that resource clean,” Springer said.

The event is being hosted by the Santa Maria Utilities Department.

Springer said cleanup will be removing anything that doesn’t belong in the riverbed.

“Cups, water bottles, plastics, fast food wrappers, everything that you could imagine,” said Springer. “Unfortunately, there’s also shopping carts, some larger items and things of that nature. Anything that we can pick up, we like to get out of there.”

Debris that collects in the riverbed can not only present a future health risk, it can also cause other problems.

“It can affect water quality, which perks into the groundwater basin here and we use it for drinking water,” Springer said. “It can also create issues if those things back up the water and cause flooding issues or other problems in culverts throughout the area.”

Springer added that just last month a significant amount of trash was removed during the Serve Santa Maria event. Even with that collection, he expects another large haul this weekend.

“About a month ago, we picked up 1,200 pounds of trash from out of the riverbed and there is certainly more to cleanup,” said Springer.

Central Coast Creek Day Cleanup will be held at other locations in San Luis Obispo County, including Paso Robles, Templeton, Atascadero, San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly, Arroyo Grande and Nipomo.

Anyone who is interested in helping at the Santa Maria River should come to the Tom Urbanske Trail start point at the Broadway/Highway 101 on/off ramp.

Volunteers should bring gloves. The city’s utility department will provide all necessary tools.

For more information, call Santa Maria Utilities Department at (805) 925-0951 ext. 7253