Bright and early this morning, about 330 people — from Lodi and Tokay high schools, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, the Heritage School Earthkeepers and more — turned out to help clean up Lodi Lake.
The event was Lodi’s contribution to the annual California Coastal Cleanup, with the goal of cleaning up trash before it flows down the Mokelumne River to the ocean.
Registration began at 8 a.m. and most of the teams left at 9 to collect trash. By 10 a.m. groups were filtering back to the lake’s Discovery Center to sort and record everything they found.
“It’s just amazing how much you get in an hour,” said Kathy Grant, City of Lodi watershed program coordinator and the organizer of the yearly cleanup.
One trio of boys from Lodi High School came back with dozens of empty alcohol bottles, mud-cakes fabric, foam cups, fast food wrappers, and cigarette cartons and butts. They’d found the trash off the Lodi Lake Nature Trail, near the bank of the river.
Another trio of volleyball players from Tokay High counted out and recorded 63 cigarette butts among the other trash they’d found.
Girl Scouts, about 15 from Troop 1895 with a visitor from Troop 130, were at the event for their second year. With the adults, they numbered 38.
Troop 130’s Alexandra Johnson listed off their finds: A lot of cigarette butts, a huge German bike lot, a gas cap, lots of plastic, fishing line, a pile of wire, a pink tennis ball.
The girls had walked the nature trail as well, and Johnson was outraged by the number of cigarette butts they’d found.
“Why are you smoking by the trees?” she said. “There’s going to be a fire.”
“The number of cigarette butts is really shocking,” troop leader Andrea Songey-Neff agreed.
A large group of Tokay students had gone into the bushes past the dog park and found more than 60 alcohol bottles.
The high school had fielded so many volunteers because the teachers and a lot of clubs promoted the Coastal Cleanup heavily, students Karen Murillo, Sol Moisen and Raegan Trull said. The event had been included in the announcements all week.
That group also found one of the strangest items of the day, a whole coconut wrapped in a shirt. Other strange finds included a used diaper, a baby mobile, butterfly wings and a large (and smelly) dead fish.
The 330 volunteers collected about 200 pounds of trash and 55 pounds of recyclables — 50 large bags.
Sixth-grader Elida Orozco, who was working with her fellow Earthkeepers from Heritage School, said that the Coastal Cleanup was an extension of work the club already does. They clean up the area around the school once a week.
“We try to help every little bit that we can,” she said. “If everyone helps a little, it helps a lot.”