Volunteers help clean Arroyo Colorado

About 20 volunteers gathered near the mouth of the Arroyo Colorado early Saturday morning, cleaning garbage scattered across the river’s northern bank. The volunteers filled dozens of black garbage bags as they combed the trash-riddled shore, picking up hundreds of discarded cans, bottles and other waste.

Saturday’s volunteers met at a stretch of the arroyo in Adolph Thomae Jr. County Park in Arroyo City for the event, which was sponsored by Valley Proud Environmental Council, a regional nonprofit that aims to protect and preserve the Rio Grande Valley’s natural and public resources.

The organization’s executive director, Laura Maxwell, said Saturday’s cleanup was just one part of a larger effort to keep the region’s waterways and parks beautiful.

"This river has become pretty bad, I mean, just look at all this trash," Maxwell explained as she picked up an old, tattered grocery bag. "Look, these would take forever to decompose."

Gary Herridge was one of several boat owners who ferried volunteers up and down the bank to help clean up trash peppered along the edge of the arroyo. "Unfortunately, most people just don’t care about this kind of stuff," he said.

Gary and his wife have lived just a half-mile outside the park for more than 15 years. "This is where I live," he remarked. "You’ve got to have pride for where you live."

As Gary’s wife, Taffy Herridge, scoured one large section of the Arroyo Colorado bank, she said how she always cleans up trash whenever she sees it, whether she’s on the arroyo with her husband or walking in the park. "Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t really even have to wait for an organizing group to do this kind of stuff," she said.

Taffy, a proud member of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s conservation committee and a retired mail carrier, laughed as she filled up bag after bag of soda cans and beer bottles, saying, "I mean, it’s just so ridiculous; why are people such slobs?"

Chuck Fultz of the Valley Sportsmen Club showed up with other club members Saturday to lend a hand.

Fultz, who has been active in cleaning up the Arroyo Colorado since the mid 1980s, said garbage and waste in the river has become a major problem.

The mouth of the Arroyo Colorado, where volunteers met Saturday, has become a hotspot of sorts, Fultz said, with some of the larger waste causing dangerous water obstructions for passing boats.

"Every time you have a hurricane, all that stuff coming off the island ends up here in the bay, a lot of that waste and garbage," he said, making it dangerous for boats coming in and out of the arroyo.

Along with helping clean up trash along the Arroyo Colorado, Fultz said he and others in his club have also been marking large obstructions in the river for years to make it safer for boats to travel.

"Anything that doesn’t belong in that bay, we’ve been trying to get it out," he said.