River cleanup volunteers use rafts to retrieve trash and refuse from the Kern
How do you help 18 volunteers clean up nearly eight miles of Kern River shoreline inside the rugged Kern River Canyon?
Give them whitewater rafts to take them where they need to go.
The nonprofit Kern River Conservancy, in partnership with two government agencies and three local river outfitters, hosted a rafting-based river cleanup Monday that netted more than a thousand pounds of trash and junk — all hauled off to a landfill or recycling center.
"We had two boats out there, and two of our guys," said Evan Moore, one of the owners of Sierra South Mountain Sports in Kernville, one of a trio of local river outfitters that contributed boats and support to Monday’s cleanup.
Also involved were Momentum River Expeditions, Whitewater Voyages, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
The rafters put in at Slippery Rock at about 10 a.m. Monday, Conservancy Executive Director Gary Ananian said of the area near Keyesville, just downriver from Isabella Dam.
Then, for more than five hours, the six rafts and 18 rafters navigated the lower Kern, picking up all the trash they could get their hands on, and piling it in the center of the boats. They pulled into shore when needed to meet with a Forest Service vehicle that hauled away the growing heaps.
Their final destination was Miracle Hot Springs.
"It's an extremely efficient cleanup to have on the river, especially the lower Kern, below the dam," Moore said. "You start at Keyesville and sweep the river all the way to Miracle."
The professional river guides are on the river every day, Moore said. "They know exactly where the trash spots are."
To cover nine or 10 miles on foot is very difficult, he said.
Only one week before, close to 100 volunteers, including Boy Scouts from Manhattan Beach and the 2024 senior class from Polytechnic School in Pasadena, hiked out on foot, cleaning up after the Memorial Day crowds on the upper Kern River, which Ananian and Moore said is much better suited to ground-based cleanup crews.
One observation made by both men is that the majority of the trash picked up on Monday was not the sort of litter and leavings you see from campers or picknickers.
In other words, they believe the worst of the dumping is not being generated by out-of-town tourists and travelers.
"We found car parts, disk brakes, radiators, a few shopping carts, one 50-gallon drum, household goods and construction debris," Ananian said.
The junk was more typical of homeless encampments and locals who don't want to pay landfill fees dumping their debris in the national forest, he said.
It was one of the largest trash hauls in years, the men agreed. The lower river was strewn with trash from homeless and illegal dumping activities, but by coming together as a community, they had accomplished something for the greater good.
The river was clean again. For now.
