- Ambassador: May 29, 2014
- Kings River Clean-Up
- Kingsburg: Kings River
Students from Kingsburg got together after school one day and cleaned up their local waterway.
Students from this year's Kingsburg High School WildLink expedition got together after school the week of graduation and put in an hour and a half cleaning up the Kings River.
WildLink staff were shocked to find the river was completely dry: "When you guys said there was no water left, I thought you meant there would be a trickle. You really meant nothing!" 2014 was an unusually low snow and rain year, so California is going through major drought conditions. The Pine Flat Dam, upstream of Kingsburg on the Kings River, was scheduled to release water a few days later.
Kirstyn, Haley, Tristan, and Leigh-Ann took advantage of the dry riverbed to try to remove bigger trash that would typically be hard to take out when the river is running. Big objects included some plastic chairs, an old river paddle, and one particularly stubborn tire.
It was a very hot day in the valley and the group was quite pleased with their big efforts in such a short amount of time.
Showing off their hard work!
Kirstyn spent a bit of time sorting through old, historic bottles on the riverbank.
Historic riprap to prevent erosion, made of old irrigation pipes. This kind of work is found all over the San Joaquin Valley. Though very effective at controlling erosion at its site, riprap often speeds up the flow speed through a channel, creating higher erosion downstream.
Leigh-Ann shows off her prize find.
How many WildLinkers does it take to remove a tire?
All five of us, it turns out!