9/17 - Biking to Work in the Morning

Update: New Twitter Account: www.twitter.com/levislitterbugs #LevisLitterbugs

Hi,

This a first time blogger creating the first entry of this blog after noticing quite a bit of litter while biking home yesterday, September 16th, two days after the first official 49ers football game. This is a portion of the route I bike to work, and this morning, roughly sixty hours after the 49ers game got out Sunday night, September 14th, I decided to bring my camera and take some pictures along the way to see just how bad game-day litter might be.

This sign is just north of the stadium, highlighting the wildlife in the area. To make it easier to read, here is the text of the sign:

Wildlife living in this creek

The Bay Area is home to more than 50 species of mammals ranging from common ones, like the California ground squirrel, to rare ones, like the San Joaquin kit fox. It includes land mammals such as the black-tailed deer, marine mammals such as the harbor seal, and flying ones like bats.

Common species of wildlife in this section of San Tomas Aquino Creek include nesting red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows in the emergent creek vegetation. Cliff swallows and black phoebes commonly nest under the bridges along the creek. Killdeer nest along the gravel maintenance roads. Anna's hummingbirds and bushtits nest in the adjacent trees along the creek. Great egrets, great blue herons, snowy egrets, pied-billed grebes, green-winged teel, Canada geese, mallards, and American coots are commonly seen foraging in this section of San Tomas Aquino Creek.

To learn more, visit www.valleywater.org

The first paragraph above mentions the entire Bay Area.

Several of those animals, such as harbor seals, are at the end of this creek where it joins Coyote creek and enters the Bay. Believe it or not, go just over four miles through the Alviso Slough (by boat), and you'll find a pack of harbor seals. Other wildlife right next to the stadium not mentioned but seen seasonally are: green herons, common mergansers, and sometimes the belted kingfisher. Carp frequent the creek all the way up to Scott Blvd, and a whole variety of fish can be found where the creek exits to the Bay such as Sturgeon, bat ray, leopard shark, and sea bass - halibut come occasionally to the south bay as well.

I have seen all of the above animals (except for the bass and halibut) either on the bike trail or on my boat in the sloughs and creeks and the Bay launching out of Alviso.

 

 This is facing south from about where that sign is.

 Notice here that the creek is in pretty good shape north of the stadium.

The first culprit is likely from a hot dog stand, under the first bridge leading to Intel Gate A.

Haagen-Dazs is not typical litter for the creek, except perhaps game day.

Budweiser, whose sponsorship logo is even more prominent than Levi's on this stadium.

Here is the middle bridge, leading to SAP Tower Gate B

In case you can't see it, enlargements are below - Jack in the Box litter at the south bridge to Dignity Health Gate C.

Perhaps they should add some text to the Dignity Health Gate bridge. It just might help.

Now here is something very actionable. Notice nowhere does it say anyone will be punished for creating a mess of the city and particularly the creek over which probably some forty thousand individuals out of sixty eight thousand will be walking.

Note there is space and a perfect spot to add a sticker to update the policy to include littering.

Seeing the above, one might think ten to forty pieces of trash from a game isn't all that bad - I agree.
Here is the repository, the creek and all its litter roughly sixty hours after the first official 49ers football game.

Having ridden this trail everyday for five+ years, this is not normal.

This piece of litter is instructions for fencing hardware, suggesting littering can't even escape the crews that work at the stadium.

This is what I would call micro-trash, similar to what comprises the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Perhaps this is the beginnings of the Great San Francisco Bay Garbage Patch. It probably needs a few years to catch up to Oakland Coliseum's Damon Slough garbage patch, though.

It continues down the trail.

Those Hetch Hetchy water pipes are about where all the garbage stops.

Capri Sun - delicious but second to none on the juice-box invincibility scale.

The creek is quite pretty just about any time of day or year.

 

 

Here I must state that the stadium traffic is not responsible for all of the pollution in the creek. Soccer balls and basketballs are found quite regularly.

The creek gets even prettier as you get further from the stadium. In this case, that's likely because this portion of the trail is closed-off during game day as part of the security perimeter enforcement.

It really is a lovely creek with plenty of little twists and turns.

A great egret hanging out.

Likewise a snowy egret and some mallards.

This is what I saw yesterday leading me to bring my camera this morning. This trash was not here last Friday. This part of the trail is open just south of Agnew, connecting Mission College Blvd and Scott Blvd to Agnew, possibly a source of decent game foot-traffic.

The street in front here is Agnew; to the left is a neat fire station with a ladder truck.

Again, that cup in the creek is probably not stadium traffic.

Nor is that foam block or basketball.

Or that Camelbak bottle. However, one typically sees this litter every now and then, not in piles - granted, the creek is not a pristine one to begin with, but it has certainly seen better days than today.

 

A crow found a yummy nut.

 

A local litterbug at least had the courtesy to not throw the bottle in the creek, but it will probably make its way there with the strong winds that come through.

This concludes part of my journey to work this morning, with pictures of litter and wildlife along the way.

In a nutshell, please do your part to keep this creek, the San Tomas Aquino Creek, clean.

That means pedestrians and cyclists could put a few pieces of trash they find in the nearest trash can. Santa Clara County could provide more trash cans along the trail and schedule an annual creek cleanup day timed with California's Coastal Cleanup Day.

However, the most influential parties in helping keep this creek clean are:
1. 49ers
2. Levi's Stadium
3. Levi Strauss & Co.
4. ABM - the Janitorial Staffing Company for the stadium (they are hiring, FYI)
5. Santa Clara Stadium Authority
6. Santa Clara Valley Water District

Please, it isn't that hard, but you have to be proactive about it. This is a nice creek, let's clean it back up and keep it clean.

Suggestions:
1. Staff the outside janitorial staff appropriately along the creek.
2. More trash and recycling bins everywhere - I didn't see very many, they would probably go a long way.
3. Enforce a no littering policy - add it to the Code of Conduct prominently displayed everywhere.

Thank you.

This being a first time blog, I suppose I welcome any and all comments below. The next post will probably be after the next game, so if you have any suggestions, I have ears.

If you would like to send me your own pictures and examples of trash, perhaps from a different game day, or during an event, shoot me an email, levislitterbugs@yahoo.com.