Volunteers work to clean up Oakland waterways: ‘All of these people care so much about their shoreline’

Barry Stenger sweated under a warm sun Saturday as he weeded, mulched and collected trash among native live oaks and cottonwood trees at Barry Place, a small nature preserve along Sausal Creek in Oakland. 

At 75 years old, he is the fourth generation of his family to live by the creek. Years of clean-up efforts have made people more aware of the creek and its rainbow trout, he said. But  a history of illegal dumping and pollution from trash and runoff continue to pollute it. 

“How do you get people to recognize the creek?” he wondered aloud. 

Stenger joined half a dozen other volunteers from Friends of Sausal Creek to clean up the watershed on Saturday as part of Oakland’s 30th annual Creek to Bay Day. Dozens of organizations led volunteers in removing trash at 38 creek sites, where they worked to restore habitats, reduce pollution and protect marine ecosystems. That effort was part of the bigger California Coastal Cleanup, said to be the country’s largest annual volunteer event. 

Since its inception in the late 1970s, California Coastal Cleanup Day has been critical to improving the health of California’s waterways. Every year, volunteers note the types and quantity of trash they find, providing data that has informed bans on single-use plastic grocery bags, plastic straws and Styrofoam foodware. A year after California banned plastic bags in 2016, for example, plastic bags were no longer among the 10 most common items collected on Cleanup Day, according to the California Coastal Commission, which organizes the event. 

Sprucing up green spaces

Barry Place is one of just a handful of green spaces south of Interstate 580 in Oakland. Though it is fenced off from the public while the city makes safety improvements, people regularly bypass the locked fence to enjoy a swath of nature. Over the course of the afternoon, volunteers made progress clearing the steep parcel. 

“If people are going to be in here, it might as well be safe,” said Ella Matsuda, 28, of Berkeley, while cleaning up wooden steps leading to the creek. The Friends of Sausal Creek recently received a grant to help make a new creekside park a reality, and Creek to Bay Day volunteers were bringing the project one step closer. 

Not far from Barry Place, at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park in Fruitvale, Angelia Vang, 22, of San Francisco, led youth workers with Frontline Catalysts to connect with Peralta Creek by “beautifying the creek with their own hands.” 

“We want to claim it as a community space,” said Xochitl Cortez, Frontline Catalysts executive director. But, she added, residents have a hard time accessing the park and they’ve raised concerns about encampments there. 

Youth from the organization’s Climate Action Leadership Institute, or CALI, removed remnants of an abandoned encampment and targeted four invasive plant species for removal. By lunchtime, Peralta Creek was flowing freely and a dumpster provided by the city was full.  

Jayden Sun, 13, of Richmond, joined CALI to be a steward of the environment. “People don’t realize how much of an issue it is,” he said. “The health of the environment affects the whole community’s health.”  

It’s a lesson Mary Spicer, founder of I Heart Oakland-Alameda Estuary, has been teaching for the past decade. She has hosted clean-up events with over 200 paddle boarders and kayakers and enlisted other Oakland organizations to clean up the shoreline and the estuary. 

On Saturday, Spicer was leading the effort at Jack London Aquatic Center with about 40 volunteers. The area gets a lot of visitors, and it is home to a diverse array of sea life. 

“Harbor seals, bat rays and all the amazing striped bass are the beautiful sea life that live right here. I don’t think a lot of Oaklanders know that they are just right there,” Spicer said. “When I see all the corrosives and garbage, it is so disheartening. All of these people care so much about their shoreline, they care about their quality of water and they care about Oakland. That’s why they come.”

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