Clearlake >> In just a few short months, 51 people have joined up with Barbara Christwitz to form Citizens Caring for Clearlake. The group focuses on cleaning up illegal dump sites and other litter in the city. They’re part of Adopt A Highway, cleaning up a stretch on the west side of 53 from 18th Street all the way to Lower Lake. The group has also been out to Sulfur Bank Road, where they’ve picked up on two different occasions.
“It’s really come together quickly and that’s because there have been so many people helping,” said Christwitz. “It just really has gotten in gear and because it’s been a drought season it’s been so much easier to go out and pick up litter.”
Citizens Caring For Clearlake developed from conversations Christwitz had with neighbors who were looking for ways to make more money. “People come to my door and they’ll say, ‘How can I earn some money?’” she said. “I thought, ‘Boy there’s a lot of littler around here. It would be nice if we could put together some people who say they need money and they can earn some money by picking up litter.’”
On December 12, the group was born. North Coast Opportunities is their fiscal sponsor and donated $10,000 toward their efforts. Aside from using their funds for the basics of trash cleanup, such as hauling litter away, the group is sticking to its mission and helping those who are in need of extra funds. “What I did was I went to Grocery Outlet and I bought 20 five dollar gift certificates,” Christwitz said. She then asked if anyone at The Bridge, the homeless day center, wanted to help with trash clean up. Two people took her up on her offer and spent a couple hours picking up litter with the group.
“I gave them each two $5 gift certificates to be used at Grocery Outlet,” said Christwitz. “We’ve gotten a start on using the money to help people who need work.”
Christwitz goes to efforts to reach out to individuals she feels might be in need of assistance. When she found some papers that had been dumped, they bore the name of a local business owner and she decided to contact him. “I left my number and I said, ‘You know, if you don’t have money for dumping, why don’t we work something out and we have this fund,’” she said. Within a day, the trash was cleared out.
Not much later she found another pile of documents and after some research she reached out to the person who had dumped them. “I said the same thing, ‘Sometimes people have trouble coming up with dump fees, why don’t we talk.’”
Though she understands that she has to be cautious when contacting people in such a way. “We want to tell people to be a little bit careful and not get too aggressive,” Christwitz said.
Even so, she wants to ensure people see that the group is active in the community. Christwitz said that Jim Steele wants to look into putting cameras up at some of the common dump sites in the area. “We want people to know that people are watching,” she said.
The first Sulfur Bank Road cleanup was organized by William Burkdoll and the second by Jim Steele. As a long time resident of Lake County, Burkdoll decided to spearhead the cleanup in an effort to combat an issue that has been prevalent since his youth. “I grew up in Clearlake and I know its big problems and I’ve seen it pretty much my whole life and it just seemed like such a simple easy thing to do that would really have a large impact and that would help the community and make the place more presentable,” he said. “If you invite someone over to your house and you have trash all over the place, they’re not going to come back.”
It was a happy coincidence that Burkdoll wanted to clean up Sulfur Bank Road at the same time that Christwitz was setting up Citizens Caring for Clearlake. Burkdoll was put in contact with Christwitz through mutual acquaintances, and the two hammered out the details. “I was just planning on going under the radar and really ignoring any laws and whatever that I might be violating cleaning things up,” Burkdoll said. “That’s where Barbara was most helpful … I was planning on going renegading through it [the property]. She contacted the people who owned it. Barbara was very helpful at going through the red tape, all the stuff that I don’t really have time for. I look forward to working with her again because she has more time and more resources than I do.”
In addition to assisting with the finer details of the cleanup, Christwitz was also responsible for the large turnout. “She was helpful in the way that she got the majority of the people out there that day,” Burkdoll said. “I met some really cool people and all who are similarly minded and really think that this is a big problem in Clearlake and it really needs to be dealt with.”
Burkdoll was more than impressed with how many people showed up to help. “I was actually kind of overwhelmed by the positive support that came from it,” he said. “The great thing was we spent a day out there, we got two tons of trash picked up and hauled off to the dump by 1 p.m. … I thought it was a pretty amazing thing to see people spend their time out there and pick up garbage so maybe people recognize that this is a huge problem.”
Christwitz is thrilled with the turnout at the cleanups as well. Aside from the obvious desire to improve Clearlake’s landscape, she thinks citizens are coming out for the satisfied feeling of a job well done. “I think that a part of it is, cleaning up litter is such a sense of instant gratification,” she explained. “You see this dump site, you pick it up, you’ve done something and all of a sudden it’s beautiful again. There’s so many things in this wold that you can’t fix, but you can fix a pile of litter. I think that’s why people enjoy it because you get to feel quite superior and you see results right away.”
In addition to their regular clean-ups, Citizens Caring for Clearlake seeks to bring awareness of the options available for those who have difficulties paying for trash pick up. “For people than can’t afford to have garbage service, you can get bags, you can buy a four dollar big black plastic bag at Clearlake City Hall and you can fill it and the on the day that your neighborhood picks up garbage and you can just put it out in front of your house and garbage people will pick it up,” Christwitz explained. The four dollars is for the bag and the trash fees. So said this can be of great assistance to people who not only cannot afford the service, but for people who may not have transportation to the dump.
Christwitz is also brainstorming ways to help people pay for dumping costs. “Doug Herron of Public Works said, ‘Why don’t you deposit $500 at the landfill?’ And when people come in and they say, ‘I just don’t have the money.’ Have a fund for people without the money,” she said. “If people don’t have the money for it, of course they’re gonna go dump it off a cliff. It would be a lot easier to pay them to dump it than to pick it up out of the creek.”
Citizens Caring for Clearlake is clearly taking a multifaceted approach to dealing with Clearlake’s litter problem. “We’re trying to go at it from different angles and one angle is cleaning up of course and then we call it stemming the tide,” Christwitz said. “How can we convince people that we don’t want to live in squalor in our area?”
But Christwitz knows that cleaning up trash can only get the county so far. “Our landfill in Clearlake, I’ve heard is becoming a virtual mountain, there’s just so much there,” she said. “We have to be thinking about some ways to truly reuse some things … Because we can be picking up litter until the cows come home but we have to be thinking about the source. There’s a quote that when we go into a big box store and buy something, like 90 percent of the stuff that we buy is in a landfill in two months. It’s our throwaway society.”
As for the future of Citizens Caring for Clearlake, they hope to have a large enough fund to be able to continue to help those who are struggling. “While I don’t want to give anybody money, I would like to be able to reward somebody with a gift certificate from a local grocery store,” Christwitz said. “So I guess that would be a long term goal. There would be enough money in the fund that we really truly could say that if you need help with garbage service that we can give you a voucher, a waiver. Because if money is the reason that people are dumping, we need to help them get those funds in order to do the right thing.”
Of course, Christwitz hopes to improve the appearance of the area. “A long term goal is a more pristine city and maybe even county because people are more conscious and are saying, ‘We want trash to go in the proper places,’” she said.
And as much as the group is about cleaning up the city, it’s also about forming connections with fellow individuals. “Citizens Caring for Clearlake is a front for building community,” Christwitz said. “That’s what I’m finding, we’re making friends and we’re enjoying each others company.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
