Weekend weather litters beaches in Santa Cruz County

UPDATE 3/7/2016 6PM:

Cleanup efforts are underway at messy beaches in Santa Cruz County, some littered with debris and trash after stormy weather hit the Central Coast over the weekend. In Santa Cruz, public works crews are doing safety checks to remove any hazards, then the logs will be loaded onto a truck and carried away.

“There’s a lot of dead trees that are up there (Santa Cruz Mountains) from the drought,” said Mark Dettle, Public Works Director for the City of Santa Cruz. “You get a lot of heavy rain and winds will blow them down and they’ll come right down the San Lorenzo River.”

But one man’s trash is proving to be another’s treasure. Kari Gale combed Capitola Beach on Monday, looking for inspiration among the sea of driftwood.

“I came down to see if there was driftwood because I love collecting,” Gale said. “I do things with it, such as artwork.”

But not all discoveries are artistic. Some are just alarming.

Local community group “Take Back Santa Cruz” issued a call of action to its members on Sunday, to help clean up local beaches including Seabright State Beach.

“We had 15 bags of trash, anything from cases of spray can paint, seven needles, an old television,” Analicia Cube with Take Back Santa Cruz said.

But she credits the city for doing what it can to keep the water safe.

“They do come out and try and push that driftwood and all of that debris up so that it’s not going to all go into the ocean,” Cube said.

ORIGINAL POST:

Public works departments in Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County are taking stock after the latest round of rainy weather. On Monday, crews surveyed area beaches, many of them littered with driftwood and other debris that flowed from the San Lorenzo River.

Local group “Take Back Santa Cruz” issued a call of action over the weekend, asking volunteers to come out and help clean up some of the trash that was entangled in the driftwood. Analicia Cube said volunteers found syringes, aerosol cans, even an old television.