Volunteers waded, kayaked, hiked and hauled Saturday afternoon during a region-wide event to remove trash from the Russian River. Coinciding with the state-sponsored Creek Week, the Russian River Watershed Cleanup aimed to remove debris and garbage from Sonoma County’s major waterway.
Russian Riverkeeper, the Healdsburg-based nonprofit, organized the event. The mission of the event is to coordinate a cleanup and removal of trash from the river and its tributaries from Ukiah to Jenner. Last year, 21,769 pounds of trash were removed from over 89 miles of stream banks and 4,405 pounds of debris were sent to the recycler.
According to Adryon Kozel, the clean up doesn’t yet have total weight for trash collected this year.
“We are still waiting on the total number of pounds picked up and also total number of trash diverted,” Kozel wrote in a message.
