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Chico News & Review - Compassion above all else - Editorial - Opinions - March 29, 2018 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content BEC water cleanup chico news Community
shared by ndcarter on 05 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Butte Environmental Council, which for decades has organized events to beautify our parks and waterways. During a cleanup in 2008, as the CN&R reported, BEC volunteers collected a whopping 10.5 tons of trash in five hours.
  • ndcarter on 05 Apr 18
     
    Butte Environmental Council (BEC) is a community organization committed to protecting and defending environmental quality throughout Butte County. By regularly removing trash and recyclables that have found their way in to our urban creeks, parks and greenways BEC is helping to keep local water clean and safe, improving wildlife habitat and reducing human impacts on our environmental quality. Chico's urban waterways are heavily impacted by litter, illegal dumping, and creekside camping. BEC is committed to treating all members of our community with dignity and respect. We often remove materials left behind by those living along our creeks. Our non-confrontation policy asks our volunteers to avoid any interactions with those in the cleanup area besides inviting them to join us. In partnership with local law enforcement, we provide notice to camps in an effort to allow time for personal property to be removed. Usable items that are removed from our cleanup efforts are repurposed whenever possible to minimize what we send to the landfill. Our community cleanups have two goals: remove waste from our creeks, and build a community committed to healthy waterways.
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Chico News & Review - Heavy lifting - News - Local Stories - February 21, 2019 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content
shared by ndcarter on 22 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • When it comes to meeting the goals of the city’s Climate Action Plan, Stemen said, “Chico was on target to meet its previous goals, and then came the Camp Fire.”
  • There is general agreement, however, that around-the-clock restrooms are needed. Gustafson’s agenda report recommends that the city “identify funding for two portable restroom systems” and continue discussions with the Butte County Association of Governments for future grants to obtain a Portland Loo, a more sophisticated outdoor restroom. Again, about a dozen people spoke to this matter. Nearly all agreed with the recommendations, but several felt they were overly focused on downtown when there was a similar need in other places. And two portables simply aren’t enough, they said. One of them was Angel Gomez, of the Butte Environmental Council. More portables are needed, she said, “especially along waterways near homeless camps,” where human feces is getting into the creeks and posing a serious public health threat.
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Contaminated water a residual effect of Camp Fire - 0 views

theorion.com/...a-residual-effect-of-camp-fire water BEC Butte County 'Camp Fire' advisory prevention
shared by dnbaxter on 09 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • dnbaxter on 09 Dec 19
     
    "One of the problems that happened when the fire came through is that it created compounds in the lines themselves that have now rendered the water in the lines and in the area undrinkable," Mark Stemen, Board chair of BEC, said.
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Millions of tons of Camp fire debris needs to go somewhere - but no one wants it - Los ... - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...le-cleanup-20190107-story.html
shared by ndcarter on 18 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • But such assurances are not enough for Oroville resident and local environmental activist Bill Bynum. Through his work with the Butte Environmental Council, he’s raised concerns about the possible health effects of two large fires at the Koppers site, one in 1963 and another in 1987.
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Chico News & Review - Constant cleanup - Feature Story - Local Stories - April 17, 2014 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content BEC chico cleanup water parks creeks
shared by rdifalco on 17 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The byproducts of homeless encampments—mattresses, tents, sleeping bags, food packaging, empty bottles, clothing and human waste—are increasingly common along Chico’s creeks, and the mess is more than unsightly. Many items at these makeshift homes have the potential to pollute the local waterways and habitats downstream.
  • Members of volunteer cleanup crews, park officials and environmental advocates agree that the problem is worse than ever. They also acknowledge that, in light of the city’s ongoing financial difficulties, the ability to clean up the camps in a timely manner has diminished significantly.
  • Robyn DiFalco, executive director of the Butte Environmental Council, said that in the months leading up to the Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup last September, there was a dramatic increase in homeless encampments throughout Chico, and despite a lower than expected volunteer turnout, the cleanup removed about twice as much trash from the creeks as the year before.
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  • “Things reached a level that no one could remember,” she said. “It was worse than it had ever been. We saw so many more mattresses, so many more tires, so many of those big, bulky items.”
  • Mark Gailey, a Chicoan who has volunteered for BEC’s cleanup efforts for nearly 25 years, said in an email that the amount of trash in Chico’s waterways “has seemed to grow exponentially—especially in the last few years. The vast majority of this trash … appears to be from abandoned homeless and transient encampments.”
  • Volunteers also described certain areas with such high concentrations of fecal matter and urine that “they required a hazmat cleanup,” DiFalco said. “When humans use our waterways as a bathroom, it has an impact on water quality; it has an effect on aquatic wildlife as well as terrestrial and amphibian wildlife.”
  • Since last fall’s cleanup, DiFalco said, she has been encouraged by ongoing discussions between city and county organizations about how to stay on top of the issue. Some locals, including a group of neighbors along Lindo Channel, have organized cleanup efforts of their own, while student volunteers from Chico State and Butte College have also proved helpful.
  • “You’re never going to solve it, but you do need to keep responding to it so it doesn’t get out of control,” she said. “The city shouldn’t be expected to do it on their own, nor should volunteers or nonprofits.”
  • rdifalco on 17 Apr 14
     
    The community's efforts to keep waterways unpolluted is more important than ever
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Chico News & Review - Creekside crackdown - News - Local Stories - September 10, 2015 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content BEC Chico Butte County Community Chico Creeks Cleanup
shared by becnews on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Cynthia Gailey identifies herself first and foremost as an environmentalist, and she’s fully aware that homeless encampments have contributed heavily to the trashing of Chico’s waterways. The degradation, she says, is appalling.
  • Still, it’s not as if the camps’ inhabitants have access to household comforts such as toilets, showers, laundry machines or garbage pick-up, Gailey says. As the coordinator for Safe Space, the seasonal, cold-weather homeless shelter hosted at rotating locations, she argues that the solution is providing unsheltered people with adequate facilities and services, not creating new laws that only “further criminalize homelessness.”
  • The environmental impacts are serious. Last year, Butte Environmental Council’s annual Bidwell Park & Chico Creeks Cleanup—which aims to remove litter from the waterways before rain washes it downstream—pulled an estimated 30 tons of garbage from the creeks. It was a record amount of trash, far surpassing the previous high of 23,000 pounds in 2002. (BEC has tracked the trash haul since 1987.)
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  • This year is shaping up about the same, based on accounts of volunteers who have worked in the waterways ahead of the cleanup, which is taking place on Saturday (Sept. 19), said BEC Executive Director Robyn DiFalco. “We’re hearing the conditions are really similar to last year,” she said. “We’re expecting to collect just as much material so long as the same number of volunteers come out again.” The volunteers pick up plenty of “typical everyday litter,” DiFalco said, but the vast majority of trash, by both weight and volume, comes from homeless encampments. However, she doesn’t want people blaming homeless people alone for the waste in the waterways. “This is all part of the bigger situation in our community and society,” she said. “Our role at BEC is to facilitate the community having a positive impact and getting out there for the cleanup.”
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2018 Archives - Ecotopia on KZFR - 0 views

www.ecotopiakzfr.com/2018-archives.html
shared by ndcarter on 26 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • This program was done even as the Camp Fire continued to ravage the community of Paradise and surrounding towns. It was a panel of community leaders offering a variety of perspectives on what has happened and what can or will happen following this catastrophe. 
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Concerns Arise Over Water Quality Following Camp Fire - 0 views

www.actionnewsnow.com/...501044711.html
shared by ndcarter on 26 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • Butte Environmental Council said that groundwater contamination will likely not happen right away, but they do recommend getting it tested.
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Housing and Climate Change forum brings community together - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...orum-brings-community-together BEC Butte County Community sustainable affordable housing forum
shared by dnbaxter on 09 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • dnbaxter on 09 Dec 19
     
    The forum on Housing and Climate Change, hosted by BEC, brought together a variety of community members with the goal to talk about housing with a focus on climate change and to brainstorm more creative solutions for housing after the Camp Fire.
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