Cotati Creek Critters 10-10-10 Trash Cleanup at Laguna de Santa Rosa

The Cotati Creek Critters Trash Pick Up, October 9, coincided with 10-10-10 Global Work Party 350.org events, when over 7,000 events were held in 188 countries as part of a global action for climate change. Altogether, at both sites (Cotati City well lot no. 2 and Falletti Park), over 55 people participated, collecting the following from the Laguna channel between Liman Way and Commerce Blvd.:

·5 x 55 gals. “redeemables” (“money back” plastic and glass bottles and cans) = 275 gals.
·1.5 x 90 gals. other recyclables = 135 gals.
·2.5 x 90 gals. trash  = 225 gals.
A total of 635 gallons of trash was rescued from the Laguna!

Cotati Creek Critters is a grassroots habitat restoration group.  Our mission is to engage the local community in restoring the upper reach of the Laguna de Santa Rosa in Cotati and a small section of Rohnert Park. www.CotatiCreekCritters.info

Participants included members of:
·SSU’s community service group JUMP
·SSU’s Environmental Forum class
·SRJC’s “Leaders of Tomorrow”
·C-CORP (Concerned Citizens of Rohnert Park)
·Transition Cotati
·Frogsong Co-housing Community residents
·and a number of other individuals, families, neighbors… Thank you!

This event was one of 7,347 in 188 countries held as part of a Global Work Party, an international day of action on climate change.  For fabulous photos of event around the world see www.350.org

Thanks to Kate Symonds (US Fish & Wildlife Service Partners for Fish & Wildlife Program), Keenan Foster (Sonoma County Water Agency), Patrick Carter (Sonoma County Waste Management Agency) for helping to kick things off, to Laurie-Ann Barbour and Chirelle McCorley for their spontaneous creative/awareness-raising input and for Laurie-Ann's photos in this story, and to our SSU interns Daniel Goulart, Connie Foster, and Alex Powell for their extra help and support.  Thanks to the City of Cotati, the City of Rohnert Park, North Coast Corporation/Redwood Empire Disposal, and Southern Sonoma Resource Conservation District for supplies and equipment.

Wade Belew, the Stewardship Coordinator, established CCC’s plant nursery and extensive collection of tools and equipment, and directs operations on volunteer Creek Stewardship Days. 

Outreach Coordinator Jenny Blaker's role is to spread the word and recruit volunteers to the project, and she is responsible for CCC’s community education program, the Inside/Outside Nature Education series.

The Laguna de Santa Rosa waterway begins in Cotati and flows about 22 miles northwest to enter the Russian River north of Forestville.  Everyone lives in a watershed, which is an area of land that drains to a single creek, stream, or river.  The Laguna de Santa Rosa watershed covers 250 square miles and comprises a variety of habitat from seasonal and perennial wetlands, streams and marshes to grasslands, oak woodlands, and vernal pools.  It encompasses all or most of Cotati, Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Santa Rosa, Forestville and Windsor.  

The Laguna de Santa Rosa is the largest freshwater wetlands complex on the northern California coast. In a state known for extraordinary biological diversity, it is located in the second-most biologically rich county, Sonoma, and is a major contributor to the County’s biological diversity. The Laguna’s fourteen-mile channel forms the largest tributary to the Russian River, draining a 254-square-mile watershed which encompasses nearly the entire Santa Rosa Plain. This includes all or part of the communities of Windsor, Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Forestville, and Sebastopol. ( www.lagunadesantarosa.org)

CCC began as an all volunteer effort in 1998, when the City of Cotati installed a section of bike path and a bike bridge over the Laguna channel, and a few individuals obtained permission to plant native trees and shrubs alongside the Laguna channel behind a couple of houses in Cotati.

In 2005 CCC successfully applied for a grant from CA’s Dept. of Water Resources. This enabled them to vastly expand their program, doing outreach to the local community, and establishing a base of operations at a City well lot, together with a plant nursery and tools.  One day, 50 volunteers showed up, and the next week, 60, and they knew they’d really launched something!  Since then, thousands of volunteers from pre-school through elementary and high school, SRJC and SSU students, community groups, and neighbors have been involved in planting and maintaining over 2,000 native trees and shrubs, and thousands of understory plants – native grasses, sedges, and rushes - along a 1-mile section of the Laguna.

CCC tries to do everything as sustainably as possible, reusing and recycling whenever we can.  Many of the tools we use come from Recycletown or flea markets and are refurbished by Wade.  We mulch with flattened cardboard boxes, and rice straw, an agricultural waste product, to suppress weeds and hold moisture around our plants.  We use old golf caddies to transport our tools to the project site.  Plant stakes are reused, and plant benches and bird nesting boxes made from recycled lumber.

Because Cotati lies at the beginning of the Laguna de Santa Rosa, everything that impacts the Laguna channel here will impact everything else further downstream as well. That’s why we hold a Trash Pick Up event twice a year, including in October before winter rains wash trash downstream into the heart of the Laguna, to the Russian River and out to the Pacific Ocean.