Volunteers clean out The San Diego River, following January's storm

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — On Saturday in Fashion Valley, volunteers cleaned up the mounds of trash that washed into the San Diego River from the Jan. 22 storm.

Volunteers helped The San Diego River Park Foundation clean up approximately 35,000 pounds of trash and debris from the storm in and along the river.

Teams set out on two separate shifts to pick up as much trash as possible between State Route 163 and Fashion Valley Road.

Sarah Hutmacher, Chief Operating Officer at The San Diego River Foundation, said storm debris often doesn’t always mean big chunks of trash.

“So little small stuff that floats,” Hutmacher said. “Bottles, cans, Styrofoam. We also see a lot of dumping, like large bulky items and furniture.”

Hutmacher and her team equipped volunteers with gloves, pickers, and trash bags, then headed into the greenery. Some volunteers were expected to show up for the afternoon shift with water gear, like kayaks, to go after trash in the middle of the river.

Hutmacher also said there was a sense of urgency to get to as much storm debris as possible before decomposing.

“All these pieces of plastic are hazards for wildlife and animals,” Hutmacher said. “They are bleached chemicals that are bad for the environment. The longer we wait, even a couple more days in the sunshine or couple more weeks in the sunshine, these plastics becomes so brittle and start to fall apart that they’re almost impossible to remove.”

Among the volunteers was Gabriel Adona, who said he heard about this cleanup effort on ABC 10News.

Adona said that while there are many ways to ‘donate,’ volunteering his time means more to him.

“I don’t have a lot of money, but I will make time because I feel like people want your time more than anything else. Being out here is a good example to model that behavior,” Adona said.

The San Diego River Park Foundation has been doing this type of river cleanup since 2001, and Hutmacher says each time, it heals the land more in the short term and the long term.