Volunteer crews clean up creeks on holiday
Work organized by former City Council member Steve Scalmanini
About a dozen volunteers were cleaning trash out of three creeks in Ukiah Thursday in anticipation of the substantial rains expected on Christmas Day.
“I’m calling this the ‘ Deluge Before Christmas Cleanup,’” said former Ukiah City Council member Steve Scalmanini. “I’d been watching the weather for a while now, and it seemed like we were going to get a good amount of rain on Friday.”
Hoping to clean as much trash as possible out of the creeks before the rain washes it all to the Russian River, Scalmanini said he contacted the local group of the California Conservation Corps and requested a crew come clean three creeks.
On Thursday morning, Christmas Eve, a crew of about nine Corps volunteers began cleaning Orr Creek, both under the North Orchard Avenue Bridge, and under Highway 101 to the east. Next the crews moved to Gibson Creek, which borders the parking lot for Big Lots, and planned to clean one more creek.
When asked if it was easy to get a crew willing to clean up the creeks on Christmas Eve, David Rourke of the CCC said “it was doable,” and that the project fit perfectly within the Covid-19 restrictions that the organization must follow.
Rourke said the group was compiling all of the trash they collected in large bags that would later be picked up by city of Ukiah crews, which was also organized by Scalmanini.
According to the National Weather Service, showers are forecast for the Ukiah area on Dec. 25, “chance of precipitation is 90-percent, (and) new precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.”
The NWS forecast for Saturday is only a 30-percent chance of showers, with a 50-percent chance on Sunday. As of Thursday, the forecast for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday was only “a slight chance of showers” each day.