CLEAN SCENE IN L.A. RIVER TRASH REMOVED.Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer ENCINO - They went down to the river with plastic bags, cultivators, picks and shovels, and came back loaded with junk. Armed with the will to clean up their community, hundreds of volunteers wearing sturdy gardening gloves scaled the concrete and earthen earth·en adj. 1. Made of earth or clay: an earthen fortification; an earthen pot. 2. Earthly; worldly. banks of Los Angeles River The Los Angeles River is an intermittent river flowing through Los Angeles County, California, from Canoga Park in the west end of the San Fernando Valley, 51 miles (82 km) southeast to its mouth in Long Beach. for the 13th annual River Clean-up on Saturday at 10 sites from the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. to the river's mouth in Long Beach. Residents came out to three Valley locations - at the Tujunga Wash Tujunga Wash is a stream in Los Angeles County, California. It is a tributary of the Los Angeles River, providing about a fifth of its flow, and drains about 225 square miles. , Griffith Park and the Sepulveda Basin near Encino - where the volunteers climbed and picked their way along the river banks. ``People use the river as a dump,'' said Ted Wong, 55, a Torrance engineer who volunteered for the cleanup with a contingent of Boeing employees. ``Hangers, belts, up in trees, hangers on top of the trees,'' said another engineer at Boeing involved in the two-day cleanup effort. ``You see belts and hangers and shopping carts. Most things we saw were shopping bags.'' Some of the volunteers found pornographic magazines among the debris at encampments made by homeless people in the thick shrubbery and dense overgrowth overgrowth Rapid growth in the sales of a mutual fund's shares to the extent that the fund has difficulty finding promising new investments or it must take such large positions in individual investments that its trading flexibility is reduced. . The cleanup effort involved volunteers from companies, schools, youth groups and other organizations who came out in force to participate in restoring the river, which has become the focus of government-sponsored beautification beau·ti·fy tr. & intr.v. beau·ti·fied, beau·ti·fy·ing, beau·ti·fies To make or become beautiful. beau efforts in recent years. Friends of the Los Angeles River, one of the river's biggest advocates, sponsored Saturday's cleanup, and set up tables with water and muffins and pit stops for volunteers sweating under the sun. ``I came here dressed to get dirty,'' said David Diaz, a member of the board of directors for Friends of the L.A. River, who set up a table at the Sepulveda site. ``These are my gardening shoes,'' he said, slightly lifting a leg Lifting a leg Closing out one side of a long-short arbitrage before the other is closed. lifting a leg See leg lifting. showing a grungy grun·gy adj. grun·gi·er, grun·gi·est Slang In a dirty, rundown, or inferior condition: grungy old jeans. [Origin unknown. tennis shoe. Rustling through the willow, alder, sycamore, ash and shrubs along the river bank, Joe Consolo, 31, an avid surfer and Web programmer from Boeing, searched for trash. ``I did a little Tarzan climbing,'' he said. ``The strangest thing ... I found a T-shirt about 10 feet up in a tree. It was from sort of some deli. There's a story behind each one of these pieces of trash.'' CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- 2) Silhouetted musicians Candy Gerard and Banjo Bob, above, entertain volunteers helping Saturday in the annual cleanup of the L.A. River. At left, two volunteers carry the remains of a mattress during the cleanup at the Sepulveda Basin in Encino. Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion