New, new river trash photo selected

The right photo makes all of the difference and I think we found it. Disregard the previous post and implication that we settled on an image, because we found an even better photo for the National River Cleanup Week's flash introduction.

What makes this photo pretty cool is that there is an actual connection to our efforts; it was taken in 2005 during a cleanup by a volunteer (and/or supporter, employee, etc) of Friends of Coyote Creek. In fact, there are a lot of photos on Flickr pertaining to specific river cleanups (bodes well for us!).

I especially liked Tom's description of the photo:

An amazing assortment of junk collects in these rafts, swimming pool hoses, soccer balls, water jugs, juice boxes, beer bottles, soda cans, spent condoms, and anything and everything styrofoam.

...During the winter, trees fall into the creek and obstruct the flow. At the same time all of the litter along the streets is washed into the storm sewers and into the creek. The result is the trash rafts.

Fortunately, there are groups like the Friends of Coyote Creek who organize creek clean-ups and do creek maintenance to remove the obstructions to flow.

And fortunately there are folks like Tom who are active with their local groups. Thanks Tom as these words sum up the need for a LARGE outpouring of volunteer and organizer support in 2007. Stay tuned for NRCW website updates; it's getting to be crunch time.