The 10 Ton Cleanup Day

Major Milestone of 10 Tons of Material Removed in Day

By Deb Kramer

The day started like any regular cleanup. We had our Action Team setup the staging area with tools, vests, gloves, and litter sticks. Lue and Ralph put the Zone signs out. Spiros and Ed showed up with the compactor. We had a large crowd of volunteers show up for the cleanup in waves.

Then, the impact of what over 200 volunteers can do together started to become an amazing feat!

Over the course of four hours, Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful’s 222 volunteers removed over 10 tons of materialfrom a nearly half mile section of Coyote Creek. It was amazing ! The severe drought this year left a usually wet section of creek dry. The segment from Yerba Buena Road (at Hellyer County Park’s northern edge) northward to nearly Singleton Road was a gold mine of trash that had been underwater for years. 

Our wonderful volunteer Vitaly Litvinenko from SJSU created the first video trailer.

Here are few of the things we collected:

Couches and other personal furniture like 17 mattresses. And, 34 tires. Photo by Deb

1.3 tons of scrap metal, including 37 shopping carts. Photo by Deb Kramer

This partial view of the creek shows two teams working

Rangers Carina and Wes used the winch on the Jeep at least a dozen times to haul up a couple of hundred pounds of material wrapped up in found tarps. Photo by Deb Kramer.

As we loaded the last pile into the compactor, the stragglers were pooped. And, the trash barely fit in the compactor since it was so full. Photo by Spiros Kolomvotos

City of San Jose’s Ed Ramirez, who is out there with us loading the compactor, said he had not let out the extender of the compactor since the closure of “The Jungle” last December. 

Here is the final tally:

• 222 volunteers

• 10.1 tons of material removed

• 1947 feet of creek cleaned (about .4 mile)

Sample of materials collected:

• 286 bags of trash

• 17 mattresses

• 34 tires

• 37 shopping carts

• 41 tarps/carpets

• 15 pieces of furniture

To see more photos, see our Facebook album.