sacramento area creeks council [ca]
2018 giving while living regional grant: $1,500

Woodard & Curran Foundation’s $1,500 grant allowed for gold-level sponsorship for the Sacramento Area Creek Council’s Creek Week, the organization’s 18th annual fundraising and awareness event.

Creek Week is a service event that also educates the public about the importance of urban creeks and their value to the people and animals in the region. For the seventh year, Sac Creeks collaborated with the San Juan School District: approximately 80 sixth graders at Mission Elementary School created artwork used to promote the event - a great way to engage students and parents and get people excited to get outdoors and help.

Thank you to Glenn Hermanson, from Woodard & Curran, Inc.’s Sacramento office, who nominated Sacramento Area Creeks Council for a Foundation Giving While Living Regional Grant.

2018 creek week report

Late high spring flows washed a large quantity of trash out of debris dams and pushed bank vegetation back into the creeks and downstream out of the creeks into the river system. More than 2,000 volunteers (about 40% adults and 60% children) worked at 90+ locations along ~35 miles of waterways to clean a creek on April 14, 2018:

• Nearly 16 tons of garbage were removed from creeks in Sacramento, Citrus Heights, Folsom, Rancho Cordova, Rio Linda, the Delta, & unincorporated Sacramento County. (60 tires, 33 shopping carts)

• Typical items removed: lots of plastic items and pieces, cigarette butts, food and drink containers, Styrofoam, furniture, lots of debris from illegal encampments, toys.

• For the ninth year, water quality testing was conducted at selected sites.

• For the second year, volunteers categorized the trash that was removed from a designated area of their creek site and entered the collected data using Kobo toolbox.

• Volunteers removed invasive water hyacinth at one site and planted trees at another site.