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News and Media

News and Media

By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

The National Weather Service is forecasting another storm coming our way here in Southern California.  The heaviest rains are supposed to happen on Thursday, the 14th of February.

The most recent storm hit on Monday, February 4th.  Not only did the rain come down in buckets, but the debris that inevitably made its way towards the shoreline caused major issues for our beaches and wetlands.  We saw thousands of pounds of debris scattered along the high tide line of those areas.

The photos in this article are pictures of debris that I removed (by myself) on Saturday, February 9th, at Bolsa Chica beach -- it came to about 42 pounds and it took me two hours to collect. Just imagine what we can do together!!

Bolsa Chica debris collected

Just after that February 4th storm, I had gone on a scouting trip and identified a few sites that needed some human hands to remove the garbage: in Long Beach, Seal Beach, and Sunset Beach.

We put out a call to our volunteers offering an opportunity to help our beaches, only to find out at the last minute that the cities had their crews out, hauling massive amounts of debris with heavy equipment.  So, by the weekend there really wasn’t that much to remove.  I emailed all of our volunteers to let them know that we didn’t need to do the cleanup.

This time, because the rain is forecasted to hit right before the weekend, I think we can be assured that we’ll be able to get a lot of it removed before the cities send their heavy equipment out.  I’ll scout the areas on Friday afternoon and decide which would be the best spot for us to tackle.

Bolsa Chica wetlands trash

So, if you want to help us get hundreds of pounds of debris out of the tide lines, plan on being in Sunset Beach this Saturday, February 16th.

Drop me a line at volunteer@oceandefenders.org and I’ll send you an email with the specifics about where to meet, what you should bring, and how we’ll be accessing the site.

Hope to sea ya there! See this photo below? This is how we'll leave it -- trash free! Kurt Wetlands cleaned up