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Each year the Butte Environmental Council teams up with the city of Chico and county to collect trash in the city's creeks and parks.

"This year we have received a huge amount of support not only from our community but the businesses, "said Butte Environmental Watershed Coordinator, Angel Gomez, "We have received more sponsorships this year than we have in years past. People are really starting to take ownership of the creeks in Chico." 

The 25th annual California Coastal Cleanup Day is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.Even though Chico doesn’t have any “coasts” per se, we do have a number of waterways traversing our city (albeit several of them are currently bone dry due to the severe California drought).Chico’s contribution to the Coastal Cleanup effort is the annual Butte Environmental Council Chico Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup. During last year’s event, we pulled 20 to 30 tons of trash and debris from Chico waterways.

We thank a large number of local community-minded Chico businesses and organizations for their help in co-sponsoring this event. (See becnet.org for the names of these awesome co-sponsors.)— Mark Gailey, Chico

CHICO, Calif. - Volunteers in Chico started the new year by cleaning up Chico waterways. January 2 was the first "Block Party with a Purpose" in 2016.

The Butte Environmental Council last held a "party" in 2014. But waterways around the city are littered with trash so volunteers are back at it.

"It is really a satisfying experience," Shelly Rogers, a volunteer, said. "We get an unbelievable amount of trash."

It’s worth noting the city has approved the main components of the waste hauling agreement, but has not finalized the details. There will likely be more tweaks made before the October date. The agreement returns to the City Council on July 5.

“A lot of people aren’t quite sure what can be recycled,” Holden said. When in doubt, some people tend to just throw things out, or throw too much into the recycling bin.

maximizing use of recycling bins, using donation stations and learning to compost can help costs drop “enormously,” especially for people using the largest bin size.

Saturday morning, September 15th as the sun comes up, hundreds of community volunteers will gather in the parking lots of Hooker Oak Park and the Annie K Bidwell Parlor. Check-in stations and empty dumpsters will be waiting for volunteers to participate in the largest round up of trash and recyclables in Chico. In small groups, formed in advance or on the spot, volunteers will be supplied with trash bags, pickers, buckets, and coffee before they are sent out to clean every creek in Chico- in just over 3 hours! Hosted by Butte Environmental Council since 1988, this year will be the 31st annual Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup.

CHICO — Music and nationally known speakers will kick off a west coast tour of California Community Rising Against Fracking during a free event Sunday at Arc Pavilion, 2040 Park Ave. Put on by Chico Community Rising Against Fracking and Butte Environmental Council, the event 2-6 p.m., is the start of a state tour that will end up in San Diego on Earth Day, according to Dave Garcia, a member of BEC. Tour locations are communities that are near the largest shale oil regions in the state, including San Francisco, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, he said.

Speakers will include: Doug Shields, former member of Pittsburgh, Penn., city council, featured in the film, "The Sky is Pink"; Shannon Biggs, director of Community Rights with Global Exchange, who will talk about community rights initiatives; Andrew Grinberg, Oil and Gas Program Coordinator of Clean Water Action, who will talk about water issues and new proposed state fracking regulations; Speakers from Chico Community Rising Against Fracking and BEC, on concerns of what local fracking for oil operations may cause to the surrounding agricultural economy. Also, there will be a showing of "The Sky is Pink," a film by Josh Fox as a follow-up to his Oscar-nominated "Gasland," about misinformation from the hydralic fracking industry.

Music by local band, Los Cabillitos de la Cancion, will start at 5 p.m. Robyn DiFalco, BEC's executive director, said the

Prop 67, the measure that would ensure a ban in every city and require stores to charge 10 cents for paper bags. The Butte Environmental Council Executive Director says we still have a lot of work to do. "In the United States, we use more than a billion plastic bags a year and less than one percent of them are recycled,” said Natalie Carter. “The rest of them end up in landfills and take more than a thousand years to degrade."

City Councilmember Randall Stone says our county needs to protect our numerous creeks, streams and rivers. "We have plastic bags going into those creeks and streams it requires us to clean that space up that costs a tremendous amount of money for the city of Chico in volunteer time as well as staff and waste time,” he said.

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.

With an alcohol ban on both the water and adjacent shores, thousands fewer people floated on a popular stretch of the Sacramento River and the resulting trash that accumulates for miles also dramatically declined.

"It was a night-and-day difference on the river, from tubes to full beers floating down to empty cans," said Lucas Merz, program manager for the Sacramento River Preservation Trust. "Just the overall respect for the river was really nice to see."

Maggi Barry, office coordinator with Butte Environmental Council, voiced appreciation to the Glenn and Butte county boards of supervisors for the ban. She said their proactive approach makes the river a better environment in several ways. "We would like to say 'Yay! Thank you for the double-duty of addressing young lives and helping clean up the environment,'" she said.

A clean-up of Little Chico Creek from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday is being touted as a “block party with a purpose.”After gathering near the windchime sculpture at the park on Humboldt Avenue near Willow Street, volunteers and community members will remove garbage from the creek and park, according to an event flier. Invasive weeds will also be cleared.Volunteers are asked to wear closed-toe shoes, long pants and long-sleeve shirts and to bring gloves and a reusable water bottle, if available. Organizers will provide tools, waste bins and water. They will also provide lunch and lemonade to volunteers. The event is sponsored by the city of Chico, Butte Environmental Council, Waste Management and the Mount Lassen Chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

The Butte County Fish and Game Commission held its quarterly meeting Tuesday in Chico. CDFW biologist Tracy McReynolds reported that only 129 steelhead have returned so far to the Feather River Hatchery. This low number means that there will likely not be any excess eggs to continue the popular steelhead planting project into the Thermalito Afterbay.

The commissioners also finalized the 2017 financial grants: Butte Environmental Council-$1,000;

Plans are being put in place that tackle the threat of fire, from prescribed burns to decreasing the amount of burnable material in the park.

Last weekend, branches and limbs were cut and hauled to shredders during the Butte Environmental Council park cleanup. That’s the start.

Not only do the clumps of vegetation and fallen wood represent fuel sources, but they are also hiding places for transients, Lowe said, noting the Fire Department has responded to several campfire problems in those situations.