CLEAN STREAM

The banks of the Sacramento River, as it meanders through Shasta County in Northern California, USA, are a tangle of unwelcome plants.

“We used to have large trees and grass instead of this clutter of impassible non-native species,” says Randall Smith, a member of the Rotary Club of Redding. “We’re trying to get rid of this junk so people can enjoy the river – and so people will see what the natural environment looks like and maybe go home and fix their own backyards.”(click below to read more)

Smith has chaired the Allied Stream Team, the club’s environmental committee, since 2000, leading its members as they tackle projects from supporting wildlife to removing invasive plants.

“The crying need for restoration of our natural habitat in Redding was much larger than picking up discarded coffee cups and Coke bottles,” says Smith, who estimates the team’s work over the past decade to be worth $1.4 million, based on government calculations of the value of its completed projects.

“Randy Smith and his efforts to clean our streams cannot be underestimated. This is work that has gone undone for generations, and his efforts have restored many of our creeks, all of which run directly into the Sacramento River, back to a near-native condition,” says Jeff Haynes, of the Rotary Club of Redding Sunrise. Haynes, who owns a landscaping business, believes so strongly in what the Stream Team is doing, he pays for his employees to help out on its projects.

Much of the team’s work involves removing non-native plants such as arundo, a tall, fast-growing grass from Asia that crowds out native species, damages the local ecosystem, and poses a fire hazard. Eradicating the plant is a tedious process, but after nine campaigns, the Stream Team is close to victory in Shasta County.

The 50-member group does not work alone. Some projects – such as the annual Community Creek Clean Up Day – draw hundreds of volunteers, including Rotarians from other clubs, Interactors and Rotaractors, college students, and people responding to newspaper ads.

Smith, a retired physician, has a knack for working with government agencies and  community organizations, including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the California Conservation Corps, says the team’s vice chair, Steve Gaston. The group has an annual budget of only $2,500 but has secured additional funding from outside sources and government grants.

The team has proved as careful a steward of money as it has of the environment: It carried out the Canyon Hollow Creek Fishway Project – a habitat restoration effort that the California Department of Fish and Game estimated would cost $750,000 – for a total of $21,000.

Smith hopes other clubs will follow the Stream Team’s lead, especially because many cities and counties have been forced to cut their budgets, and funds for protecting the environment are often the first to go.

“We have to galvanize commitment through organizations like Rotary to do the work ourselves,” he says. “We can plant that message not only in Guatemala or Sudan but also here, where we have an overwhelming need to preserve what we have.”