SAN ANTONIO – With temperatures in the 30s and the city’s first freeze of the year, volunteers still gathered along a stormwater treatment site to haul sediment, leaves and debris — work they say helps keep polluted runoff from reaching the Edwards Aquifer.
“It was very chilly,” said Brendan Gibbons with RiverAid San Antonio. “Yeah, we got our first freeze of the year.”
RiverAid San Antonio partnered with the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance to clean the Lorence Creek Preserve, where a passive treatment system filters runoff from nearby pavement before it can reach the aquifer, Gibbons said. Even small rainfall events can carry contaminants such as oils and chemicals, he added.
“What it’s doing is any time that there’s even a small amount of rain, it gets passively treated by the series of systems that are all very simple but do a great job of removing pollution from the water before it gets into the Edwards Aquifers,” Gibbons continued.
Volunteers focused on removing built-up sediment and trash. They used twigs and leaf litter to stabilize soil and reduce erosion, measures intended to slow water, prevent washouts, and keep pollutants from moving downstream.
Victoria Gomez, a volunteer, said much of the work involves moving sediment that washes in from the street during storms.
“We are removing sediment that has come in with the runoff off the street, and it’s getting thrown in the wheelbarrows, and it’ll be redistributed on the berms downstream,” Gomez said.
For volunteers like Gomez, the payoff is immediate. They get to see a problem area look “clean again” after a morning of work. And in the long term, they return to the area to track improvements.
“These are where I’ve made some of my best friends,” Gomez said. “It’s so good to revisit the same waterways time and time again, and see how every single time we come back, we’re making it a little cleaner.”
Gibbons said RiverAid hosts volunteer opportunities throughout the year, including quarterly efforts at sites like this and other weekend projects across the city.
“We have all kinds of different volunteer opportunities. ... We did this four times a year, but almost every weekend, there’s some RiverAid San Antonio volunteer opportunity,” he said.