Friends of Ballona Wetlands Host Event for California Coastal Cleanup Day

micahhall79
Sep 21, 2022
2 min read

Updated: Dec 13, 2022

LOS ANGELES, CA - The Friends of Ballona Wetlands hosted a cleanup for California Coastal Cleanup Day at Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve. The cleanup was on September 17th. Patrick Tyrrell is the manager of Habitat Restoration, and he led part of the cleanup. "We're out here for a couple of hours but we've seen a tremendous result from our efforts. Typically, we get anywhere from 100 to 200 pounds of trash, sometimes even more than that."

Photo Credit: Micah Hall

When it rains, Ballona's creek receives a lot of trash before it ends up on the beach or in thee ocean. Tyrrell says the creek drains 1-hundred and thirty square miles of LA.

Volunteers were also warned to be aware of syringe needles while cleaning. Any syringe needles found were collected and disposed of in sharp item containers.

Cleanup volunteer Sophie Sufnar describes the items that she came across were things like, "candy wrappers, chip wrappers, a bunch of cigarette buds, lots of paper bags, and masks."

The cleaning project lasted for three hours. Samantha Allen is with the National Charity League. She thinks people should put words into action.

She said, "I think it's extremely important because we're always talking about helping the environment. I think that we set that off to bigger organizations and we don't understand what our part is in it."

Friends of Ballona Wetlands is a non-profit organization. They offer free tours on plants, wildlife, community service, and community events every month.

Their goal is to restore and protect Los Angeles' last coastal wetland and to educate their diverse community on how to be stewards of nature.