Over 1,100 volunteers came out to the 29th Annual River Rally Cleanup and Environmental Expo on Saturday morning at the William S. Hart Pony Baseball and Softball Complex in Valencia. Their goal was to remove trash from the Santa Clara River between the Bouquet Canyon and McBean Parkway bridges.
According to Santa Clarita Mayor Cameron Smyth in his opening remarks before everyone got to work, volunteers just like those before him had collected almost 500,000 pounds of trash at River Rally events since the first one in 1994. “Obviously I’m supposed to brag about Santa Clarita, but it’s easy to do,” Smyth said. “I don’t know how many other communities have over 1,000 volunteers showing up at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning to take the time to clean up their community.
So, thank you all for making Santa Clarita the wonderful place it is.” Among those volunteering were many groups, including Saugus High School cheerleaders, Young Marines, numerous local Boy Scout troops and even one troop from Lancaster. Dillon Jones from Troop 86 said this was his second year participating in the River Rally Cleanup.
“Where we’re from, they don’t do a lot of things like this,” he said. “We’re helping out a community. So, it’s really refreshing.
You get to meet new people and you get to do a nice service.” Jones added that last year, he was part of a group that found a car in the river and had dug it out with anything they could find, including tent poles. Jessica .