SAN ANTONIO — When San Antonio native Hugh Hardin set out for a walk on the San Antonio River Trail in Espada Park Thursday morning, he was gobsmacked when he came around a bend south of Military Drive and saw an ocean of litter piled high on the river bank for an extended reach.
Hardin passionately exclaimed "This hurt me so bad! We walked up here this morning just to go look at the flowers! And we came up and saw this and it's just...what are we doing?"
Hardin compared the scene to the anguish of being at a funeral for a friend.
"How are we letting all this beauty go and not be responsible? It really hurts! It really hurts," he said.
His friend Gladys Jacobson said the mess reminded her of a developing country.
"It's clogging our waterways and going into our oceans and killing our ocean," Jacobson said .
"I can see somebody threw one bottle out or one piece of paper, and thinking it was nothing but look at how many nothings it took to get to this point! Somebody's got to stop and realize - be responsible," Hardin added.
The mound of mess is made up of floatable debris left on the bank during a high water storm event. When the water recedes, the plastic bottles and Styrofoam containers that escape into the environment from all points upstream end up choking the banks of the river in south San Antonio.
Steve Graham is the Assistant General Manager of the San Antonio River Authority (SARA).
Graham said regularly occurring scenes like this are why his group is running a campaign they call "Don't let litter trash your river."
Graham said SARA and the City of San Antonio usually spend more than $200,000 removing trash from area creeks and rivers.
"The longer it's been since a rain event, the worse it is and the more trash we get," Graham said, adding that litter has always been an issue but now more people than ever are aware and angered by the problem.
"20 years ago people didn't know we had this problem but now that people are recreating on the creeks and waterways they're aghast and they're saying why is it so bad," Graham said.
He said the San Antonio River Trails and the Howard W. Peak Greenway Trails System are seeing more visitors each year, and they are people who care about the resource in a passionate way.
"One of the great things with our trails is people are getting connected to nature. The bad side is we realize we are impacting nature with a lot of litter," Graham said.
Even though the most visible sign of trouble ends up south of the city, Graham said litter comes from every part of town and it is everyone's responsibility to stop the pollution at the source.
"Sadly nobody says 'that's me,' they say it's somebody else but we all are part of the problem, so we all have to be part of the solution as well," Graham said.
"In our community rivers flow from northwest to southeast and that debris and litter simply accumulates and we get more and more as it goes downstream," Graham said, adding "This is not a southside problem, this is a community-wide problem."
Agreeing with the assessment by Jacobson, Graham said the litter is a problem that extends far beyond the Bexar County line.
"You should see the trash we get in Wilson, Karnes and Goliad counties. We have mountains of it. People try to kayak and there's so much debris it's hard to kayak," Graham said.
Graham said SARA crews and perhaps a hired contractor will be working to clean up the mess "But we do ask for grace because it can take days and sometimes up to a week because the amount of trash is epic," Graham said.
SARA does have a volunteer program for people who want to help keep the natural system as healthy as it can be.
Here is a link to the River Warriors program: