Over 400 members of the community held trash bags and gloves with family, friends and community organizations to help clean up Bidwell Park on Saturday.
After checking in at Hooker Oak Park and receiving a complementary shirt designed by artist Hannah Moore, volunteers walked by booths with information from various environmental advocacy groups such as Save Our Water.
The Butte Environmental Council’s 37th annual Bidwell Park & Chico Creeks Cleanup took six months to plan. Working tirelessly to coordinate with sponsors, the city and volunteers, event manager and assistant director of the BEC, Miranda Kokozska, said.
The trash that enters Chico’s 15 miles of creeks and waterways eventually reaches the ocean, harming wildlife and polluting our water along the way, Kokozska said.
The main hotspots for the cleanup were Lindo Channel, or more commonly known as Sandy Gulch and Little Chico Creek. Volunteers could be seen all over Bidwell Park with their trash pickers.
Bryce Goldstein, who is running for City Council District 7 attended the event. This is her eighth year participating in the cleanup. For five years she was a council member for the BEC before running for City Council.
“People unfortunately are dumping waste in our creeks … so we also need to make sure that we’re making it easy for people who live in houses to bring their waste somewhere other than our parks and creeks. Easy and affordable,” Goldstein said.
Mike Johnson, who is running for District 1, also attended the event. He called for engaging the public to care for the community.
Both Goldstein and Johnson cited expanding resources for the homeless and lowering the cost of housing as another way to help keep trash out of the park.
Brother and sister fraternities Gamma Zeta Alpha and Sigma Omega Phi attended the clean up, picking up over nine bags of trash. They help clean up parks and the community by working with Habitat for Humanity and Garden Blitz, a service building local gardens.
The Bidwell Run Club — who helped sponsor the event — brought their members out to help clean up the trails and give back to the community. Club co-founders Jess Ehrbar and Manny Escalante spoke about the importance of cleaning up the trails and building up the community to share in the beauty of the parks.
Sage Hudson, a Chico local, celebrated his birthday by bringing his friends to help gather trash. Bidwell Park is important to him for biking, swimming and watching movies. This was his second time at the event and his group picked up over 15 bags of trash at Little Chico Creek.
However, not everyone cleaning up trash was there for the event. Brad Fuller, unaware that cleanup was happening, could be seen walking by Sycamore Pool gathering trash. After retiring and settling down in Chico with his wife, he took up walking through Bidwell Park, but was frustrated with the amount of trash he saw.
This is something that Kokozska was hoping community members would take away from Bidwell clean up. She wants to rally support from the community and engage young people to keep Chico’s parks clean.
With the event costing about $25,000 to put together, the BEC is only able to hold a clean-up day once a year.
This year they received $2,000 from the Butte County Fish and Game Commission, and Public Works offered to take the trash collected for free. Other ways of raising money come from donations, the city and other groups, Kokozska said.
However, they wish they could do more to help keep the parks and waterways clean, Kokozska shared. She mentioned a lack of funding as the main reason for being unable to hold more cleanup events.
The Creek Watch hotline is a resource for community members to call and help give the city information about creeks by reporting overflowing manholes, and sewer line obstructions.
Chris Hutton and Jenna McMahon can be reached at [email protected].
