Advertisement
Advertisement

Bay cleanup yields waste cornucopia

Share

The catch was plentiful Saturday morning in and around San Diego Bay. But you wouldn’t want to eat what an estimated 1,000 volunteers found during the annual Operation Clean Sweep.

At Chollas Creek near 32nd Street, they brought in tires, mattresses and shopping carts, said Sophie Silvestri, director of operations for the San Diego Port Tenants Association, an event sponsor.

Among the more improbable discoveries were old telephone booths, Silvestri said.

Advertisement

Volunteers scoured the concrete-lined creek bed and brought up items for dumpster disposal. Some of more personal nature included underwear and bras.

“We found a lot of bottle caps, I found a syringe, tampons, you name it,” said volunteer Zach Brown.

Larger debris such as wooden pallets were hauled up with a crane from Pacific Ship Repair, which unloaded them directly into a dumpster.

The creek enters into San Diego Bay, between Naval Base San Diego and General Dynamics NASSCO. That makes it a major target for the cleanup, now in its 24th year.

Sponsors include the Port of San Diego; Navy Region Southwest; the U.S. Coast Guard in San Diego; and many private companies such as SDG&E. It’s an industrial-scale operation; last year volunteers removed 45,440 pounds of debris.

This year five cleanup targets were selected, including Tuna Harbor south of the USS Midway Museum, Convair Lagoon, a stretch of median along Harbor Drive, and Driscoll’s Wharf in Point Loma.

The Navy contributed about 500 volunteers, said Bill Hall, chairman of the port tenants’ association, which is customary.

“Admiral (Patrick) Lorge, the base commanders, get the word out to their troops and they just come down in droves,” Hall said. “They are among our most productive here.”

About 50 of the Navy personnel are divers, who are essential in removing debris from the bay bottom, Hall said.

This year was the first time Tuna Harbor and Driscoll’s Wharf were chosen for the cleanup day, Hall said.

At Tuna Harbor, crews motored out on rigid inflatable boats, while others worked from dockside, trawling the bottom for debris. They were tied to ropes held by other divers on the dock.

Corpsman Robert Allen said the ropes were an essential safety measure in an enclosed area, especially because there was no visibility. If in trouble, the divers communicate with line pull signals.

“It’s all silt,” Allen said. “As soon as you stir up the dust, you can’t see anything. It’s just feeling. It’s almost black in front of your face.”

For their pains, the divers’ haul included: A Weber barbecue cover, a milk crate, part of a television, a cook pot, a hand truck and a bicycle -- some covered in mud, most heavily encrusted with barnacles.

“Our job is fun, but we’re professional when we do it,” said Jeff Griggs, a Navy Diver First Class. “We do this every year just to help out the community.”

And more debris will be waiting for the divers next year.

“We’ll barely even put a dent in it,” Griggs said. “It’ll take quite a while to clean up this bottom.”

At Chollas Creek, Silvestri said much of the debris will be recycled, including electronics, glass, plastics and metals.

Unfortunately, the creek has become an unofficial dump for those who don’t want to bother properly disposing of waste, she said.

“Chollas Creek is an area people tend to think, out of sight, out of mind,” Silvestri said. “I don’t want to recycle my tire, I don’t want to have to deal with it. I want to throw it into the creek.

“Well, that stuff always winds up in the bay, because Chollas Creek has an outlet into the bay,” Silvestri said.

Advertisement