Freddy Mesas, 13, a West Oakland Middle School student, holds a garbage bag for Shomari Carter, 30, an ArtEsteem coach and former McClymonds High student, during a three-hour cleanup of 31st and Market streets in West Oakland.
June 3, 2011
Pamela Tapia, Reporter
Creating billboards, painting a nature mural and launching a school garden are among the ideas that McClymonds students are considering after tackling toxic dumping in West Oakland.
Students from West Oakland Middle School and McClymonds High School students hosted a three-hour community cleanup on March 24, a few blocks away from Mack.
“We decided to clean up 31st Street because of the illegal dumping that goes on there,” said Alissa Kronovic, program facilitator for West Oakland Health and Safety Collaborative.
Accompanied by Joe DeVries from Oakland’s Neighborhood Services Division, students geared up with gloves, trash bags, brooms, and litter pickers to clean up the area.
Earlier this year, Urban Releaf, an Oakland-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group, placed filter cloths under the drain gates to trap materials that go into San Francisco Bay.
Students doing the cleanup found that he so-called “$10 fix” had caught a variety of trash items, ranging from bags of chips to plastic grocery bags and “thousands of cigarette butts,” according to Shomari Carter, a coach for ArtEsteem, an Oakland nonprofit.
The site at 31st and Market streets in west Oakland was chosen for its long history with toxic waste. The site currently includes a plot of land occupied by soil-cleaning equipment.
“They remove the toxic gases from the soil, separate (them) both, and release the clean air into the atmosphere,” said Jane Wardani, of Urban Releaf.
Following the cleanup, which took place under rainy conditions, the West Oakland Health and Safety Collaborative surprised volunteers with a free food demonstration sponsored by People’s Grocery, a West Oakland nonprofit group that is working on increasing healthy food options in the community.
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