SAN MARCOS RIVER
Over a dozen San Marcos River lovers participated in a state wide litter cleanup on May 17 as a part of the Trash Free Gulf Campaign. The campaign was organized by Gulf Trust, a nonprofit organization that works to advance the long-term sustainable use and conservation of the Gulf by implementing pragmatic solutions. Trash clean ups occurred state wide, but David Zambra- no, The Eyes of the San Marcos River board member, led the San Marcos River cleanup. The campaign was in partnership with H-E-B’s Our Texas, Our Future sustainability program, as well as YETI, which offered support and rewards for volunteers.
“We’re bringing Texas based, science backed solutions to some of the Gulf’s most challenging problems,” said Jay Kleberg, Gulf Trust executive director. A big focus for the organization has been marine debris, after a 2018 study done by the University of Texas Marine Science Institute found that litter accumulates on Texas shores at a rate ten times faster than any other gulf state.
“What Gulf Trust is trying to do is bring some science to some of these issues and balance economic development and growth with conservation, for not just wildlife and marine species but for the benefit of humans as well,” Kleberg said.
Zambrano found out about the campaign when attending the Green Communities conference in Waco last September where he learned about Gulf Trust.
“I attended their seminar and one of the things [Kleberg] mentioned on the tail end of his presentation was that they were organizing a statewide litter campaign, so for me that’s just like saying Christmas is half a year now,” Zambrano gleamed.
He started to plan the San Marcos branch of the clean ups, focusing on water based cleanups using kayaks, canoes and stand up paddle boards, downstream from Rio Vista.
“I had some lovely people that I had never met before reach out and say, ‘Hey I want to be a part of it.’ I had board members and friends join,” Zambrano said. “That is really helpful to me because it meant that I had people there that I could trust [to help with] the logistics of the day.”
Zambrano is no stranger to river clean ups; as a board member of the Eyes of the San Marcos River, he helps in the weekly Monday morning cleanups at Rio Vista from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. He has also traveled around the state to help participate and organize clean ups, with one coming up in Galveston in June through the Trash Free Gulf campaign.
Some perks with the YETI and H-E-B partnership meant that participants received both YETI cups and H-E-B gift cards in exchange for their time cleaning the river. Keep Texas Beautiful was another sponsor involved who helped contribute clean up kits to the volunteers.
“We did have a larger group than normal; we usually have between six and ten people, and at this time we fielded seventeen,” Zambrano said. “So that’s actually a larger group for a waterway cleanup than we traditionally hosted, but it worked; the weather was amazing.”
He emphasized that this campaign was special since it implements a broader reach to help bring awareness to the fact that this is an issue for everyone, anywhere in Texas.
“The connection we’re trying to make with Texans is that we’re a coastal state, which most people don’t think about, and we have river systems all over the state that drain to the Gulf,” Kleberg said.
Gulf Trust has also partnered with the Parks and Wildlife Foundation and Mender, which is a company out of Dallas that does IT asset recycling. The Trash Free Gulf Campaign will see 45 cleanups statewide by the end of the summer. A big emphasis with the San Marcos River cleanup was to prevent litter from making its way down to the Gulf, especially plastic and styrofoam.
“[Plastics] are in the environment forever, and they break down into smaller pieces called micro plastics. And that ends up in the water, in our waterways. And it could end up in birds that can feed on fish, and fish may feed on those plastics. And we know that shore birds, sea turtles and marine life are also feeding on it,” Kleberg said. “So if you’re in San Marcos and you see a plastic bottle on the ground, you should care about picking that up and putting it into the trash can or into recycling because there’s a decent chance that that’s going to make it to the ocean and that, if you eat seafood or if you’re a wildlife lover, that’s going to impact those organisms further down the waterway.”
The big takeaway that Gulf Trust wants to emphasize is that Texas is a coastal state, not just a state that has a coast.
“What we do upstream in Texas, whether you’re in San Marcos or you’re in Abilene or El Paso, absolutely has an effect, not just on on the coastline in our bays and estuaries but the larger ocean; because in many ways, the Texas coast is the nursery for the rest of the Gulf for shrimp and crabs and other fish,” Kleberg emphasized. “There’s this connection that we all share through our waterways and, ultimately, to this much larger body of water that’s connected to the rest of the globe.”
One can find out more about the campaign on their website at trashfreeg ulf.com and gulftrust.org. Join a Monday morning river clean up all summer long from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. at Rio Vista Park, for more information find The Eyes of the San Marcos River on facebook.
