An Oak Creek Ambassador’s job is never done, but at least this month, the employees of the Oak Creek Watershed Council have been getting more help.
After 22 volunteers collected nearly 185 pounds of trash during a two-day Oak Creek cleanup April 8 and 9, 27 more helped the Ambassadors restore vegetation Saturday, April 23, to the Oak Creek Homestead Trail — Forest Road 9845 east of the Sedona Wastewater Reclamation Plant.
“Our last cleanup was a lot more people, and a lot more trash, than we usually get,” said Dalton Zanetti, operations assistant for the Oak Creek Watershed Council. “We had three Facebook posts on our [April 8] cleanup of Midgley Bridge that reached about 250,000 people.”
Including Pink Jeep Tours and even a Chandler brewery, who helped swell the volunteer ranks more than 10 times their usual number April 23.
The Ambassadors’ efforts have netted more than 1,000 pounds of trash so far since last summer’s Oak Creek cleanup ended Sept. 13 — including over 300 diapers and 760 pounds of feces.
“Human and animal, mostly dog poop,” Zanetti said. “Most of the people we meet off [Forest Road] 89B are respectful of what we’re doing, but we do clean up there quite often and have to walk straight through random people’s campsites.
“We tend to not bring volunteers down to that area because we come across lot of transients. Also, we see the occasional nude person down there — and we don’t want to expose volunteers to that.”
Nevertheless, Zanetti believes that more than 50 volunteers from Recreational Equipment Inc., alone could join the Ambassadors at Sedona Red Rock High School for a Saturday, May 14, cleanup that will follow up one Friday, April 29, from Crescent Moon Ranch down to Mormon Crossing.
“That would be awesome,” Zanetti said. “We’ve had multiple cleanups this year in middle Oak Creek.”
The Ambassadors will then return to Oak Creek Canyon for four months of thrice-weekly summer cleanups beginning Monday, June 6. Those efforts removed nearly 5,000 pounds of trash from Oak Creek in 2015.
For more information about future Oak Creek Ambassador cleanups, please see the Friday, April 29, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.
