Nearly 40,000 pounds of trash cleared from American River parkway during cleanup

More than 1,200 volunteers on Saturday gathered to pick up trash on the American River parkway, from Discovery Park in Sacramento to Black Miner’s Bar in Folsom. The annual Great American River Cleanup is organized by the American River Parkway Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 1983.

“We really appreciate the love that the Sacramento community shows for the parkway,” said Scot Murdoch, the foundation’s director of communications.

As of Saturday afternoon, Murdoch said that they were close to hitting their goal of 40,000 pounds of trash collected.

In Discovery Park, site captain Justino Santana said that over the last few years, there’s been a huge increase in waste to be picked up, due in large part to the city’s affordable housing crisis and the number of people living outside and in encampments.

“It’s just gotten progressively worse, especially since 2019,” he said.

Santana said the Discovery Park site hosted 149 volunteers on Saturday. Families with kids and different volunteer groups brought the number of people back up from its slump during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

Closer to downtown, kids aren’t able to participate in all of the cleanup sites, like the one at the Northgate river access, which is one of seven 18-and-older volunteer sites.

Leigh Rutledge and her husband, Bill Hambrick, have been volunteering at Northgate for more than 10 years, but Saturday morning was the first time they’d picked up someone’s dentures.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, but this one was different,” Rutledge, the site captain, said with a laugh.

“This is where the action is,” she said, gesturing to a bucket of needles.

It was Cody Hess’s first time volunteering, and he chose to do so at Northgate to be of maximum service. Volunteers need to be prepared for sharp objects such as needles and knives, heavy furniture, car tires, fuel tanks, body waste, and other less child-friendly paraphernalia.

“I’m a big biker, I’m big into the outdoors,” said Hess, who lives in Land Park and recently started cycling on the parkway. “I saw there was really some stuff that needed to be cleaned up, so being able to do this is fun.”

Like Santano at Discovery Park, Rutledge and Hambrick have watched trash accumulate more and more every year.

People living in the encampments along the river are largely eager to help out, and grateful for the trash bags. Volunteers are told not to bother people living in active encampments, but a big part of the morning is addressing the abandoned ones.

On August 25, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted to ban encampments from the parkway – a decision that will take effect at the end of this month.

“It’s changed so much,” Rutledge said. She echoed Santana at Discovery Park, and said that about three years ago, three hours of trash cleanup started to feel almost pointless.

“I used to come out here and feel a sense of accomplishment, like I made a difference that day,” she said.

“Now, you just don’t make a dent.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2022 at 4:10 PM.