The Cupertino Courier

News

Oddities, recyclables, more are found

By BARBARA DOHENEY

"Ha! Found you, mister! You're going to jail with all the others!" exclaimed Benjamin Scharf, 9, skillfully maneuvering a pole with a nail on the end to snatch up a bit of litter. Nearby his sister, Rebekkah, 12, made her way across a rocky creek bed like a seasoned hiker.

Their father, Steve Scharf of Cupertino, said similar creek cleanups during this year's Coastal Cleanup Day were eagerly anticipated by his son's Cub Scout Pack 433. "There are a lot of packs that want to do it, so they have to portion [the creek] out into small sections," he said.

With fresh air in their lungs and sunshine on their backs, a small army of workers walked the muddy creek beds and leafy trails. Bending over, they peered among stones, grasses and brittle fallen logs for the glint of metal, bright colors of plastic or the smooth curve of old bottles.

Rose Putler, a student at Homestead High School, arrived with her brother Eric and parents Dan and Liza. They answered a call for volunteers at Intel, her mother's workplace.

With gloves, sticks or ingenious reach-and-grab contraptions, the volunteers pulled ragged plastic sheeting from layers of mud. They dragged trash from stagnant pools and spiked cigarette butts from the ground. Yet for many, the day's activity was more a treat than a chore.

The first meeting of Monta Vista High School's Octagon Club garnered 20 volunteers for the cleanup, according to club leader Cheryl Ho, a high school senior. The Octagon Club is a service organization of students sponsored by Soroptimist International.

"It gives them an opportunity to work with their friends," she said of the large turnout. "I guess it's the excitement that we get to do something cool."

Unusual finds during Coastal Cleanup Day are such a regular part of litter removal during the annual event that prizes are given for the oddest items. For example, Edmund Jones hoped his sighting of a half-buried Pacific Bell telephone booth might win a prize.

It took just three hours for 160 local volunteers to gather 4,500 pounds of trash and debris from trails and picnic sites along Stevens Creek and its reservoir. Overall, the county's streams and reservoirs were freed of 22,464 pounds of trash and debris, and 5,503 pounds of recyclable materials. The reservoirs provide nearly half of Santa Clara County's drinking water.

Out on Stevens Creek reservoir, Bev and Rick Lindahn drove puffy rubber boats quietly along the shore. Their craft are powered by non-polluting electric motors. The couple gathered four bags of trash, including fishing gear and many plastic foam bait containers.

"The worst thing is the fishing line," Bev Lindahn said. "You've got to figure the little ducks get their feet in it."

Several creeks in the water system wind behind back yards and harbor birds migrating through the area. Stevens Creek flows past the Lindahns' home in Sunnyvale. As kids, they loved to play in the shallow creek and as teenagers hung out by the deep reservoir, Bev Lindahn said. The popular park in the Cupertino hills drew more than twice as many volunteers as last year.

Site coordinator and longtime volunteer Ken Halsey said he finds himself reminding his children to clean up and recycle just as his own parents taught him. "I walk my dog every night in my neighborhood and always bring along a bag and pick up trash," he said. Halsey became a volunteer with the Trail Watch program in 1985. "I wasn't aware of what beautiful parks we have until I started volunteering."

This year's volunteers were encouraged by the results of their hard work. "We found a lot of recyclables, but not too much trash. The trash is going in the trash can, I guess," Arden Leung reported. Arden, a freshman at Monta Vista High School, joined classmates cleaning around the reservoir as a biology class assignment.

"We should figure out new ways of recycling. Even though we take the trash from here, which helps, we put it in the landfill, which destroys that ecosystem," said fellow freshman Madhav Srinivasan. "It's a problem the world has, and we need to fix it."

Interested in volunteering?

Creek Connections Action Group: www.cleanacreek.org or 408.265.2607, ext. 2238

Santa Clara County Parks & Recreation Department: www.sccgov.org/portal/site/parks or 408.355.2254.