Celebrating Watersheds at Creek Week 2024

This Creek Week (September 21-28, 2024), SBUCC volunteers and supporters cleaned up Oak Park, toured Mission Creek by bike, joined the dialogue about the planned restoration of La Goleta Open Space, and enjoyed beverages and company at the City's Creek Week Happy Hour. We appreciate everyone who came out to join us, and we look forward to next year!

We kicked off the week with Coastal Cleanup Day at Oak Park, a prominent neighborhood gathering place along Mission Creek. 22 volunteers, including local families, SBUCC board members, and residents of the nearby Mission Park senior living community, pitched in to remove trash from the creek and surrounding park area. Together we collected 22 lbs of trash, and discovered that confetti and balloons (including confetti-filled balloons) are a major issue at this site. As a result of this finding, we are now looking into ways to get the word out about not using plastic or Mylar confetti outdoors.

A few volunteers who came early got a special tour of the ongoing restoration project from Tim Burgess of the SB City Creeks Division.

A group of 9 Mission Park volunteers were a great help in removing trash from the picnic areas before it could wash into the creek.

You never know what kind of treasure you'll find in a creek! This volunteer found 2 working calculators.

Board members Jean-Michel Ricard and Joshua Mejia show some of the trash we kept out of the creek by having the cleanup. 22 lbs of trash were collected, much of which was confetti and other tiny items.

A few of our cleanup volunteers, and some newcomers, came back the next day for a bike ride along Mission Creek from Rocky Nook Park to the sea. Board member emeritus Louis Andaloro, along with special guest Cameron Benson who served many years as a leader in the SB City Creeks Division, led participants through a series of points of interest along the creek. Highlights included seeing a beautiful pool known to historically host steelhead, and riding our bikes through a flood control channel!

Cameron Benson explains the problems associated with having buildings that overhang the creek at De la Vina and Vernon. These buildings are planned to be taken down.

Many participants' favorite part of the tour was riding in the flood control channel and checking out the fish passage, which Cameron and his colleagues helped design many years ago.

Next up in our series of Creek Week events was a community outreach event at La Goleta Open Space with the Wildfire Resilience Collaborative. Plans are in the works for a restoration project that will remove invasive species to reduce fire risk near homes as well as improve the natural ecosystem functioning of Las Vegas Creek. We enjoyed many insightful conversations with community members who were passionate about the creek and open space and brought suggestions for ways to engage more people. If you did not get a chance to attend the event but would like to learn more about how to get involved in your own local creek, whether that is Las Vegas or another one in the County, let us know! We're always looking for creek stewards to join our community.

Camila Leon of the Community Environmental Council and Brian Trautwein of the Environmental Defense Center discuss the restoration with neighbors.

We finished off the week at the Creek Week Happy Hour that the City of Santa Barbara put on at the Brewhouse, hearing from community members about new creek issues to look into and answering questions about how to engage with one's neighborhood creek.

Thank you to everyone who came out to support and celebrate local watersheds during Creek Week! We look forward to next year!