Four college-age students had collected about two tons of trash in nearly three months from Oak Creek recreational areas for the second straight summer.
Only those Oak Creek Ambassadors, by Sept. 7, found that the Slide Fire had not reduced the proliferation of waste from the 4 to 6 million annual visitors to the creek — it had only pushed the problem south, from the canyon into the city.
“The problem hasn’t gone away,” said Marie McCormick, director of operations for the Oak Creek Watershed Council, who coordinated the ambassadors’ efforts. “Anything south of Midgley Bridge was open during the Slide Fire, so instead of going to Grasshopper Point, people went down to the biggest cleanup sites — Chavez Crossing, Mormon Crossing and Red Rock Crossing.
“People are still loving Oak Creek to death. They will find any way to get to it.”
The Carroll Canyon trail, which begins right across Shelby Drive from Sedona Recycles was one of the hardest-hit, McCormick said, as the four ambassadors collected 1,260 pounds of trash in a single day.
“Carroll Canyon has many sub-washes that drain into it from the neighborhoods, which funnels lots of trash that has accumulated over the years into Oak Creek,” she said. Both that cleanup site and Soldiers Wash are “very high-use areas” for not just hikers and horseback riders, but popular among locals walking their dogs.
In all, from June 12 through Sept. 7, 3,736 pounds of trash were picked up, with more than triple the amount of feces that was collected during the ambassadors’ first summer cleanup in 2013 — 260 pounds, about 80 percent of which was dog feces, according to Amina Sena, hydrologist for the Red Rock Ranger District, a long-time collaborator with the council.
“We have a tradition of bad recreational behaviors in this corridor since the 1970s, and we’ve been normalized to them. The tragedy of the Slide Fire was, it was one irresponsible recreator, and now we have 21,000 acres that have been charred.”
For the full story, please see the Friday, Nov. 7, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.
