Picking up trash on a Saturday morning is not my idea of fun.
I don't care how much of an environmentalist you may claim to be; nobody wants to handle soiled diapers, soggy cigarette butts and mud-crusted condom wrappers, nor risk a poke by a hypodermic needle. Especially knowing the litterbugs who threw out said junk are probably sitting at home watching Saturday morning cartoons. In their pajamas. With a frosty beverage in hand.
But here I am, gathering this rubbish from Boca Ciega Bay and Bear Creek, thanks to Gulfport resident Kurt Zuelsdorf, who has come up with a novel way to get 20 people out here to clean up our waterways.
His gimmick is hard to refuse: Zuelsdorf, owner and operator of Kayak Nature Adventures, offers residents a chance to paddle area waterways in exchange for filling one or two bags with garbage.
So on this Saturday morning, as a cool breeze drifts across the still waters of Boca Ciega Bay, I'm gathering Pinellas County's litter.
And you know what? I'm having fun.
Take a boat out on one of Pinellas County's lakes, creeks, streams or bays and you'll invariably see a once pristine body of water covered with debris. Blame the storm drains, uncovered sanitation trucks or irresponsible dumpers, but the fact remains: The county's waterways are in trouble. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 69 of Tampa Bay's waterways are "impaired" with pollutants, mostly from nitrogen caused by storm runoff. (There are no statistics that account for the amount of trash.) For a region that prides itself on its coastal waterways, there is no government agency stepping up to improve the situation.
"There's nobody cleaning up the waterways — not local, county or state," says Zuelsdorf, who began his kayak business a year ago on Clam Bayou. "On the ground somebody is responsible, but once trash hits the waterways, nobody is responsible."
The recent controversy over Clam Bayou is a case in point: Gulfport officials blamed the storm runoff on St. Petersburg, while St. Pete officials pointed fingers at irresponsible Gulfport boaters. The Southwest Florida Water Management District (Swiftmud) has a plan to limit stormwater run-off into the Bayou, but officials said implementation would take another three or four years. No agency offered to help in the meantime.
So Zuelsdorf, tired of his customers paddling past small islands of garbage in Clam Bayou, applied for a $3,700 Swiftmud grant to take volunteers out on kayaks to clean the area. Instead of browbeating residents, Zuelsdorf let people see for themselves the effects of litter on the bay.
"I'm finding out what green really is when you can put together a program that combines human nature and environmentalism," he says.
When the grant ran out two months later, he gathered sponsorships from local companies such as Hess, Publix and the Tradewinds hotel. (Fifty dollars allows one person to kayak.)
Forty trips later, Zuelsdorf still attracts people from across the county to participate in the cleanups. Now that he's focused attention on Clam Bayou, Zuelsdorf is moving to other area waterways. Like Bear Creek, a watershed stretching four miles from St. Petersburg to South Pasadena. The creek's lush mangrove forests and no-wake zones make it a haven for birds, otters and manatees.
"To watch them swim in debris — you can see, it's not right," he laments.
Cigarette butts. Slimy white gloves. A beach ball covered in crud. Spend just a few minutes scraping stuff out of the mangroves that line Bear Creek and you can become very pessimistic about our wasteful, consumerist culture. I'm not alone; our band of (normally) merry muckrakers — which range from 2-year-old Ramsey to grandfathers like Jim Mason — can also get a little peeved after picking up the umpteenth Gatorade bottle.
"It makes you realize how much pigs people are," grumbles Patrick Clark, his wide-brimmed hat shielding him from the sun and errant sharp branches as he wrestles with a bucket stuck in the mud.
Clark and his wife, Bess, met Zuelsdorf at one of the Clam Bayou cleanups earlier in the year.
"Now, I'm inspired," he says. "Every time I take a kayak out, I take a trash bag with me."
As the Clarks paddle out to another mangrove patch, I stick around to wrestle with a beach ball stuck in the mud and seaweed. A black skimmer stares down at me from the treetops as Zuelsdorf comes around the corner in a motorboat.
"Skimmers are running out of places to nest in Pinellas County," Zuelsdorf says.
These sea birds, he tells me, eat the fiddler crabs and crustaceans that make their home in the mangroves, which right now are covered in trash.
"They're waiting for us to finish," he says, "and as soon as we are, they are going to have a smorgasbord."
After clearing what I can from the skimmer's dinner table, I follow the small armada of orange kayaks past expensive South Pasadena homes to the more modest Gulfport homes hugging Bear Creek.
At one of those homes, Desi McCarthy and her father, Bob Caldwell, who have lived on the creek for decades, meet us. They've set up a welcome station for us with water and a place to stretch out.
"Unfortunately, there are some people who feel best way to get rid of large branches, instead of sawing and throwing them out, is simply throw them in the creek," complains Caldwell. He adds that the county has ignored this portion of the creek for years as the silt and trash has gotten out of control. I head back toward our launching point.
When I reach shore — my arms, legs and back aching terribly — I hoist my bag of trash next to an already mounting pile of concrete, wood scraps, Styrofoam coolers, buoys, lawn chairs and plastic bottles. Looking over the pile, Zuelsdorf lists past salvaged items like notches in his environmental headboard: 50 or so tires, 26 shopping carts, a half-dozen bicycles, one motorcycle, two blow-up dolls and a syringe. He has a running total of 20,000 pounds of trash gathered over the last six months.
I ask Zuelsdorf if he's considered lobbying county and state officials, pressuring them to pay attention to our polluted waterways. He pauses for a minute.
"That takes a long time," he reasons. "What we did today took a week [to organize]."
For all his passion, Zuelsdorf refuses to get political on the issue. And really, he's not sure if he even wants the government involved:
"Who is going to learn if you clean up people's back yard every week?"
This article appears in Aug 8-14, 2007.
