Keeping Laguna Beach’s coast litter free

Mike Swanson

Laguna Beach’s third annual Coastal Cleanup Day attracted more than

300 volunteer trash-pickers and about 20 divers who collected nearly

1,000 pounds of trash by the end of the day Saturday.

Roger von Butow, one of the event’s organizers and founder of the

Clean Water Now! Coalition, said about 70 to 75% of the volunteers

came from out of town.

“We had quite a few interesting finds out there,” von Butow said.

“Overall, everything was a tremendous success.”

One of the more odd finds was an open house sign from a Laguna

Beach realtor that had a 497 prefix and a 714 area code. It washed

ashore near Vacation Village, von Butow said.

Laguna Beach resident Dan Shapero hit the Anita Beach sand with

six or seven families and 12 to 15 kids at 8 a.m. in a YMCA Indian

Tribe outing. Shapero said cigarette butts were the number-one find,

and that they filled up two hefty bags full of garbage in about 90

minutes.

“When you look at the beach out there, it really doesn’t look that

dirty,” Shapero said. “Once you comb through it though, you find all

sorts of things you shouldn’t be finding.”

Shapero said the families often go to Anita Street Beach on their

own time and that it was nice to take the kids out to clean a beach

they frequent. At 9:30 a.m., some of them surfed in celebration of

their cleansing day.

Coastal Cleanup Day extended all the way to the Dog Park on Laguna

Canyon Road, where public works official Craig Justice handed out

literature to dog owners detailing the impact of their pets’ feces on

the ocean if it isn’t scooped up.

This was the 19th annual Coastal Cleanup Day in California, with

cities north and south participating. More than 100 countries also

joined in this year, more than doubling the participation level of

the past, von Butow said.