Joining Forces to Clean Up the Southeast Greenway

On May 3, a beautiful Saturday morning when the marine layer hadn’t yet burned off, 13 volunteers, myself included, gathered on Franquette Avenue at the edge of the Southeast Greenway. The aim: Pick up trash to keep our greenway beautiful.

We wore pants tucked into sturdy boots, prepared to trample through mud and grass, safe from possible tick bites. The group included newly joined volunteers as well as four student nurses from Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC).

4 nursing students from the Santa Rosa Junior College volunteered on clean up day

SRJC Nursing students from left: Ray Kini, Molly Boyer, Karen Silberg, Nicholas Pollock

We focused on the flat stretch of land between Franquette and Yulupa. Sue Field, volunteer coordinator for the Southeast Greenway, worked with the City of Santa Rosa to provide trash collection tools and garbage bags for volunteers. We made quick work of the clean-up, turning an unpleasant chore into a chance to interact with other volunteers and be outdoors. City Maintenance staff picked up the collected trash piles the following week.

Beer bottles and soda cans were the most commonly found litter on the property. There were also surprises. These included a vintage-look metal bed frame, a wooden straight-backed chair, a huge, heavy roll of barbed-wire fencing, and a paper-mache pumpkin. One of our volunteers collected a bucket of nails from a creek.

Woman gathering trash at the Southeast Greenway clean up day Orange bucket filled with rusted nails found during clean up day

“I attended one of the monthly walks along the Southeast Greenway earlier this year and felt curious and excited about its development as I live nearby,” said Karen Silberg, community outreach officer for the SRJC Student Nurses Association. “I thought the clean-up day would be a perfect opportunity for a few students to volunteer, even in the midst of finals. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we had a lot of fun gathering items left behind and sharing nursing school tips as we were all on different stages of our journey.”

“With supplies from our City partner, our newer volunteers and SRJC nursing students made a nice difference on the Greenway,” Sue Field said about the effort.