INSTRUCTION IN ECOLOGY : PUPILS CLEAN PARKLAND FOR EARTH DAY PROJECT.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Sixty elementary school kids spent Tuesday pulling trash out of a stream and off its wooded banks, performing a good deed for Earth Day and learning a lesson in environmental preservation.

In a sense it was Mother's Day along Piru Creek, as the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders from Charles Helmers Elementary School in Valencia gave a helping hand to Mother Nature - by cleaning up the land and water of Frenchman's Flat and leaving the federal parkland much better than they found it.

The irony that children were picking up messes left by adults - much of the garbage consisted of beer bottles - was not lost on the Saugus pupils, who were on an all-day field trip to the rugged area between Castaic and Gorman, alongside the old Golden State Highway.

The outing was organized by California Environmental Project, a Glendale-based nonprofit agency established in 1989. CEP runs an ``Adopt-A-Canyon'' program to clean up public lands.

``There's quite a bit of trash in the most unlikely places,'' said Jeffrey Gantman, a program manager for CEP who led the Piru Creek expedition.

The youngsters, from Carolee Doing's and Dave Hinrichs' classes at Helmers Elementary, set about their task with unbridled enthusiasm, swarming along the shrub- and tree-covered arroyo as if they were hunting for buried treasure. CEP issued each youth a pair of canvas work gloves and a large heavyweight plastic garbage bag, supplied by Miller Brewing Co.

``It's sick. It's like, nasty. They leave their junk,'' said Kasie Shilpp, 11, rummaging through a collection that included birthday candles, a soccer ball pinata and a cardboard ``suitcase'' for a 12-pack of beer cans.

Kasie and fellow fifth-grader Teri Severa, 11, stumbled upon a makeshift bathroom in a clump of bushes near the creek. Their zeal to pick up trash was tempered when they found used tissue on the ground; they quickly moved on to another site.

Many of the children retrieved soiled diapers from the creek and its banks. Fourth-grader Nick Ferndino, 9, carried in his garbage bag a tiny pair of Little Mermaid underwear, a vodka bottle and a small, empty jar of baby food.

People who litter are ``lazy,'' said Chris Robles, 10. ``They don't want to walk around to find a trash can, or they don't want to keep it in their car,'' the fourth-grader said. Picking up someone else's dirty refuse, he added, ``is disgusting.''

Pupils saw firsthand the slovenly side of human nature as they waded into the creek and climbed along the rocky banks to pluck debris off the ground and out of the water. ``We found (pieces of) carpet and metal poles, and there were lots of corn cobs and diapers,'' said Jason Plummer, 11, as he shuffled back to the school bus in his father's military-issue, size-14 rubber boots.

Nick Gillott, 10, Brandon Clark, 12, RylanDowns and Gary Mortensen, both 11, took it upon themselves to be the dam-busters - disassembling the piles of rocks that previous Piru Creek visitors had stacked to form barriers in the stream and create a swimming hole of sorts.

Gantman said that when the water, which flows south from Pyramid Lake, is dammed up like that, bacteria can multiply in the creek. ``It's not a healthy thing to have this water stagnant. These streams are supposed to flow freely,'' he said.

``Some of the things are so filthy that we don't even want the kids to touch them,'' said Darla Murphey, who was stuffing her garbage bag alongside her son, Kyle, 12. ``No place is safe from all this stuff. If we saw somebody dumping that in our front yard, we'd be furious,'' she said.

``I didn't think there would be this much trash,'' said Jordan Alexander, 11. The fifth-grader, mulling the likelihood that the creek and Frenchman's Flat could be dirty all over again in a week's or a month's time, was at a loss over what message might make litterbugs change their ways.

Ranger Frank Aguilar gave national forest visitors a slight benefit of the doubt regarding the litter, saying they might leave it behind because - unlike beaches or city parks - there aren't lots of trash cans on the federal lands. Many visitors come from countries where burning or burying trash is acceptable, Aguilar added.

``A lot of people come (to the forest) with a concept that there's going to be somebody to clean it up after they leave,'' the forest ranger said. ``It's basically laziness, and a little bit of irresponsibility,'' Aguilar said.

Gantman said he hoped students would take with them one of CEP's favorite catch phrases: ``Pack out what you pack in.'' In other words, if you have a creekside lunch, don't leave your paper cups, empty bags of charcoal briquettes and liter-size plastic soda bottles behind. Instead, stuff a garbage bag into that picnic basket, he said.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--color) Bags of trash pile up as 60 pupils from Charles Helmers Elementary School in Valencia clean up along Piru Creek on Tuesday.

(2--color) Sixth-grader Tiffany Oliver, 12, picks up broken glass left by campers along Piru Creek in Angeles National Forest. The clean-up project was part of an Earth Day program by the California Environmental Project.

(3) Jeff Gantman of the California Environmental Project gives Helmers Elementary pupils safety tips Tuesday at Angeles National Forest.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News