SAN ANTONIO – City workers who started their work week Monday morning picking up trash in Brackenridge Park said the mess resulting there from an Easter weekend tradition wasn’t “that bad.”
Michael Baldwin, parks manager for the city of San Antonio, donned gloves and began picking up bags of people’s discards before the sun came up.
He said in years past, it wasn’t unusual to find mounds of trash scattered all over the park.
“Considering how many people spent Easter here at Brackenridge Park, it looks OK,” Baldwin said. "We really worked hard. Our volunteer services team worked hard to ... educate the community about recycling and picking up trash."
Baldwin said employees and volunteers passed out trash bags and recycle bags to campers all weekend long, hoping to get a jump on the mess they’d find Monday morning.
Each year, the city of San Antonio lifts its curfew on camping in some city parks. This year, 10 parks in all, including Brackenridge, were open to people who wanted to sleep outdoors.
As a volunteer, Ashley Smith said she spoke with many of them throughout the weekend. She returned Monday for the final cleanup.
While some were pleased with the way campers gathered up their garbage, Smith still was caught off guard by the amount she found.
“Everybody was saying, 'We'll throw out our trash. We'll recycle.' So I wasn't expecting to see so much trash today,” she said.
Smith was part of a sorority from Our Lady of the Lake University who volunteered for the cleanup.
“We’re a service-based sorority,” she said. “Over Easter break, some of stayed in San Antonio instead of going home. So we decided to just do something good for the community."
Baldwin said during past cleanups, his workers have collected as much as five tons of trash from Brackenridge Park alone.
-------------------------------------------------------
Don't miss a thing. Get email alerts from KSAT12 today.
Get alerted to news events as they happen or sign up for a scheduled news headline email that is delivered right to your inbox. Breaking news, severe weather, daily forecasts, entertainment news, all of the day’s important events to keep you up to date wherever you are.
Sign up today. It's Free.