The L.A. River Clean Up

Hello, my name is Taylor Galindo and I am currently taking English 101 with Ms. Hernandez. On April 23rd, I volunteered to help clean up the L.A. River in the FoLAR clean up. As a child growing up, my dad always bring my siblings and I to the L.A River to play and "admire nature". At the time, I didn't believe that it was a river. Rivers usually have blue or light green water, with fish living and swimming in the water. But when you look at the L.A.River, it's a total opposite. The water is a murky dark green with brown algae, like this one. Until now, a freshman in college, I now understand and appreciate the river although it may not be like rivers in Arizona or Canada. So in appreciation to the river, our community and class came to lend a hand to this beautiful historic river and revive it to its natural state. While picking up trash, I noticed that the majority of the trash was plastic bags. They were EVERYWHERE! Dried out, old, under rocks. After seeing this, it hit me that we use way too many plastic bags and that our society liters a lot. Thank God for the plastic bag discontinuation. After taking a break to look up from picking up trash, all I saw was a community together as one, here for one purpose. To help clean the river and help out the environment.

After helping out for over an hour or so, I started to realize the urbanization and expansion of Los Angeles. In the picture above, you will notice on one side, it is the streets and houses and on the other, it is electricity panels? And right in the middle, is the poor L.A. River waiting for society to take it over and to turn it into buildings or houses. This picture reminds me of the Lorax when the Once-ler started to overtake the forest and turn it into factories. Society expands without looking at the consequences. My experiences with the clean up was all positive, and I'm glad I volunteered. Los Angeles should try and do this every Saturday and I'm sure that the Earth will recover from all the pollution and begin to thrive again.