Help is here! Something's Working Right!

Having contacted five city managers,  the SCPD, Santa Clara Valley Water District, in addition to the 49ers, Levi's Stadium, ABM, and Levi's Strauss, I still have not heard who cleaned up the stadium last week, and who now, as of yesterday, cleaned up a good batch of the horrendous trash from the first rain. However, I'm pretty sure the most recent cleanup is the Water District.

 I won't say the creek is now stupendously clean, but this is a pretty awesome start considering it was a total mess just this Thursday. Someone also disposed of the kiddie pool and big trash cans I pulled from the creek and placed in TUV's parking lot off of Mission.

 Look how much better this looks! If this were the first image you saw, one might take note of how much debris is still there. But take a look at Thursday's pile and please recognize how much better this is. That 5" fish I saw and his friends now have a chance to go upstream, plus all those leaking paint cans are gone. FYI, this location is the Agnew bridge over the creek.

 

Check it out! Debris nets. Someone put these up in the last 24 hours and no more than 24 hours after the previous blog posting. This is the first one, close to the bridge over Agnew.

On the far left is a second net downstream from the first. Now, I'm going to have to make a guess that this is the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Thanks, people! I think that the people that cleaned up the debris and put in the nets were probably not intending to do that with their day. My guess is their day job right now is fixing all the flood control gates and pipes, preventing erosion of the hills of those pipes, etc. Probably a machine operator crew, plus some heavy lifters for the sandbags. If I had to guess, these same people were asked nicely to cleanup the horrible mess right near where they were working, and this crew came through. Thank you! Because I still haven't heard from anyone or any city department, this is only a guess.

Snowy Egret just chilling with a tarp that floated by.

A bazillion tiny fish were in all the 6-12" deep semi-still areas. These were hanging out around one of the flood control pipe inlets.

Went by the stadium before tomorrow's game. A bit of leftover debris from Thursday floating still under the Hetch Hetchy pipes: 2x4s, some bottles, and some spray paint cans. Nothing like Thursday, though.

Since after two events of litter the majority of trash comes from everywhere besides the stadium, I figured my suggested wording from my first post could use an update.

We can move the big bold suggestion from Dignity Health Gate C to SAP Tower Gate B.

Thankfully, the north side of the stadium continues to be very clean. I worry if there is a strong rain for two or three days - often flooding the creek to just a few feet below the top of the path - that anything and everything I saw and didn't see will go straight to the bay at a rapid clip.

More subtle suggestions - perhaps rewording the Intel ad on the left could inspire people?

Whoever is doing this, thank you again. I have much hope now after a bit of despair on Thursday. People are being proactive: in just a day's work the stadium litter was cleaned last Saturday, and a big chunk of first rain flooding trash was picked up yesterday or today.

One suggestion to those who put the debris nets out. I think those were probably the best things on hand judging by them being held down by the sandbags used on that hillside. However, when a big rain comes, (for California's sake I hope it does) that water line is going to exceed the net height by several feet.

Doing a little homework this evening, a company called Elastec makes some pretty neat Trash and Debris Exclusion Barriers. I don't know what the pricing is on these, but the company's in Illinois and here is their email address. Elastec's phone is 1 (618) 382-2525.

Getting a few of these and draping them across the length of the creek, anchored near the high water line would allow them to float to whatever water level and catch this stuff. I imagine the people at this company can probably explain exactly how to use these things.

If these were placed in the creek every mile or two or three, not only would it distribute the debris loading, but it might also help locate where a popular dumping site is if there are no other resources to perform that work.

Again, if anyone would like to contact any number of relevant authorities, I have posted two batches of contact info, one from my first blog post and one from my last post.

Whoever is doing this work. Thank you. Many more people than just me appreciate it.

Finding endgame solutions and making proactive efforts are happening, and that is exciting. Let's see what tomorrow's event brings.