River Blitz Surveys the State of Santee's River Parks

Volunteers turned up at on Saturday ready for a nice walk along the with a specific purpose in mind- surveying trash, non-native plants and other anomalies in the semi-annual .

The San Diego River Park Foundation organizes the Blitz, which covers the river in Santee from Chubb Lane all the way through Carlton Oaks to . The volunteers broke into teams of four or five people, with at least one member being a trained leader, so volunteers need to experience.

Just about anything and everything ends up along the river, taken there and left by people or carried downstream: lawn chairs, dryers, lots of beer bottles and plastic bags, waste at fishing sites, homeless encampments, construction dumping and much more (see photos).

There are a handful of non-native, invasive plants we were to keep an eye out for, including Tamarix, Eucalyptus and Egyptian Palms. These crowd out native plants and suck up a lot of water.

My team was assigned the south bank of the river, beginning near Chubb Lane and Cottonwood Avenue, near the facility- which butts up against .

One person took photos, and three others took notes, one about trash, another about non-native plants and another about any anomalies within the park.

The data is then compiled into a State of the River report, which guides future and other projects.

The is doing a lot of work in and around Santee, and Santee Patch will continue to report on their activities.