Santa Monica Beaches Get Clean Sweep

By Teresa Rochester

They came. They saw. They cleaned up.

More than 1,000 volunteers armed with green and blue trash bags swept across Santa Monica beaches Saturday morning gathering nearly 650 pounds of trash and 670 pounds of recyclables at the 16th annual statewide Coastal Cleanup Day.

"Coastal Cleanup was a total success," said Alix Gerosa, program director at Heal the Bay, the non-profit organization that sponsored the event in conjunction with the City of Santa Monica and the California Coastal Commission.

Santa Monica volunteers were among the 8,500 people up and down Los Angeles County's coastline cleaning up beaches and hauling in a record setting 59,000 pounds of trash and 4,500 pounds of recyclables.

"The amount of trash, 60,000 pounds pulled in, is just fabulous," said Gerosa. "It just shows that getting a couple of thousand volunteers makes a difference. We're pleased."

Along with the not-so-surprising cigarette butts, candy wrappers and soda cans the strangest item to turn up on Santa Monica beaches was underwear, Gerosa said. At other locations in the county volunteers picked up far stranger items.

Up the coast at Malibu Creek State Park, volunteers pulled out three-and-a-half 1940's-era Ford Fairlanes from Las Virgenes Creek. Other items hauled off beaches ranged from odd to just plain creepy.

At the Redondo Beach Pier volunteers found a decapitated cat with a crucifix in a burlap sack. A Loch Ness monster toy turned up, as did a dead seal, a lobster trap, Pokemon cards, condoms, tires and a broken toilet seat.

Last year more than 8,700 volunteers picked up more than 55,000 pounds of trash and 5,000 pounds of recyclables.