On Saturday, September 20th, Clean Creeks, Healthy Communities (CCHC) hosted a site for Coastal Cleanup Day (CCD) on Coyote Creek at the intersection of Phelan Avenue and Roberts Avenue just next to Yerba Buena High School. Now in its 20th year, CCD is the world’s largest single-day volunteer event. In California, more than 54,000 volunteers gathered at over 850 sites for this day of service. In Santa Clara County alone, there were 47 sites which hosted almost 1,500 volunteers. Together, these volunteers cleaned 53 miles of waterways and collected almost 40,000 pounds (20 tons!) of trash. CCHC had 29 volunteers who donated 81 hours of time and picked up approximately 1750 pounds of trash – wow!

Although San José is not necessarily on the coast, the work that our volunteers have done remains just as crucial to the health of our coasts and shorelines. Data from past California Coastal Commission cleanups has indicated that anywhere between 60-80% of debris on our beaches and shorelines is made up of single-use disposable plastic items that originate on land, traveling through storm drains, creeks, or rivers to the beaches and oceans – items like plastic utensils, food wrappers, bottle caps, plastic bags, etc.

This figure shows how intimately all of our waterways are connected, no matter the distance from the coast. It also shows that all of our efforts, whether inland or on the coast, are all an important part of keeping our coasts clean and that no effort is too small. This is something that our volunteers understand and are passionate about as this CCD was by far the strongest showing ever of volunteers and trash collected. So a big thank you to all of those volunteers who came out to make a difference not only in their local San José community but also helped keep California coasts and beaches beautiful and trash-free!

October 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of the opening of San José City Hall. 

It all began with a little girl. Soon after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, she came to the San José Police Department's headquarters on W. Mission Street to donate money she collected to help officers stay safe while taking on the bad guys.