On October 12, Earth Team students from Richmond, Pinole, and Berkeley joined forces with the City of San Pablo and Kids for the Bay for a litter assessment and cleanup at Davis Park in San Pablo. Students arrived to the park early and trained with Program Manager Darius Roffe on the On-land Visual Trash Assessment Protocol and completed surveys of the park. Next, they completed surveys which will allow the city to monitor trash generation levels throughout the year. Finally, they joined a group of volunteers for a cleanup effort.
Taking advantage of the dry season, interns climbed down into the creek bed to remove trash that had accumulated from the park and surrounding neighborhood. They discovered many unique items including a bicycle, car battery, bags of cement, and a rusted over typewriter. In total, the interns and volunteers removed more than 1000 lbs of trash.
This cleanup effort serves as a hands-on experiential learning application of the students’ focus on watershed health throughout this year. By combining these cleanups with education on the importance of watersheds as well as STEM skills such as water quality testing, students gain a holistic understanding of the centrality of watersheds to healthy communities, ecosystems, and life throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Interns graduate from the program with the skills to become stewards, educators, and leaders in their community.
Interns will return to Davis Park throughout this year to install native plants in the pollinator garden, conduct more litter assessments, and continue their cleanup efforts. Earth Team would like to thank our partners including the North American Association for Environmental Education’s 21st CCLC Watershed STEM Education Partnership and the City of San Pablo for making this project possible.
