Published 2006-04-01T00:00:00Z”/>
Julianne Riddle
Dead birds, crack pipes, empty whiskey bottles and a freezer full of human feces were some of the items collected at the eighth annual Scour and Devour event Saturday.
The citywide cleanup by students, faculty and citizens brought 720 volunteers. After they returned from their jobs, a tri-tip barbecue at the Kendall Hall lawn sat ready for hungry helpers.
Students, faculty and community residents collected at least 6 tons of trash, while also weeding, painting and washing cars. CAVE, Associated Students Recycling, and The Edge Campus Christian Fellowship organized the event.
Barbara Kopicki, the A.S. Recycling coordinator who handled the volunteer registration, said the day was a success.
“Any time you get that many students out at 8:30 in the morning, it’s impressive,” Kopicki said.
Every year they expect a few hundred more volunteers than the year before, Kopicki said. Because so many people wanted to contribute, there was not going to be enough jobs for everyone. This year the event expanded to include a cleanup of nearby Chapmantown and helping some nonprofit organizations like the Chico Cat Coalition.
At the Shell station on Nord Avenue, first-year student Rebecca Hull washed a white Mitsubishi Gallant, gripping two soapy sponges in each hand. The money from the car wash would be given to the coalition to save abandoned and domestic cats.
Hull said she didn’t have a preference as to where or what she would be doing for the day.
“I was up for anything,” Hull said. “It didn’t matter. I’m from Southern California and we don’t have anything like this down there.”
Job captain Sara Zook cleaned up Lost Park in downtown with her team. They discovered a homeless person’s shelter hidden behind thick bushes and disposed of a mattress, a box of records and several 40-ounce beer bottles.
“It was funny, but it was also the hardest thing,” Zook said. “Lots of weird stuff. You wouldn’t think that someone lived in a tree shelter.”
Many groups were sent to Bidwell Park to clean. Volunteers cut down trees, removed blackberry bush roots, hacked at Johnson grass with grubbing axes and jumped into the creek to break down rock dams.
While senior Angelica Torres ripped a thick-rooted weed from the ground, she said she was having fun doing hard work.
“My hands are starting to hurt,” Torres said. “But it’s good to be in contact with nature. You can really smell the ground.”
At noon, volunteers finished their jobs and came back to devour the barbecue. There was food enough for 900 people. Fifty-five chickens, 250 pounds of beef, 120 tomatoes and 800 bottles of water were just some of the items provided for lunch.
One of the most frustrating things about the day was seeing a pile of trash and knowing it wasn’t in a group-designated area, volunteer Jared Gibson said as he picked at a whole rotisserie chicken. Gibson painted over graffiti on a dam in Upper Bidwell Park and later picked up debris that blew into a field next to Wal-Mart.
“I just really like working hard and getting things clean,” Gibson said. “It’s just a great feeling to do a whole lot of work and get stuff done.”
Julianne Riddle can be reached at
<a href= “mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a>