Dear Editor:This Saturday, Sept. 25, at 9 a.m. Heal the Bay and Keep Downey Beautiful will join in cleaning up the Rio San Gabriel Riverbed. Parking is available in the lot off Pico Vista Road in the Rio San Gabriel Park parking lot. Keep Downey Beautiful will furnish all the necessary items to use for the cleanup. With the help of thousands of citizen volunteers, Heal the Bay will attack trash on Los Angeles County beaches and inland waterways as part of its 21st annual Coastal Cleanup Day. Southland troops will mobilze from 9 a.m. to noon at more than 60 cleanup sites from Compton to Malibu. Coastal Cleanup Day volunteers have collected more than 1 million pounds of trash in Los Angeles County since 1990's inaugural event. A recent article in the L.A. Times stated that over the next year, 16 cities in southeastern Los Angeles County will install screens beneath nearly every storm drain that flows into the lower L.A. River. Once the custom-built stainless steel devices are installed inside nearly 12,000 catch basins, authorities expect them to keep 840,000 pounds of debris from reaching the ocean each year. A deceptively simple solution to this problem is for each of us to never litter. -- Byron Dillon, Committee member, Keep Downey Beautiful

********** Published: September 23, 2010 - Volume 9 - Issue 23