Dealing with Long Beach’s flood of trash

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When it rains, Lennie Arkinstall scrambles to staunch the outflow of urban debris churning along the Long Beach area’s swollen rivers and channels.

It’s a routine task for Arkinstall, who this morning was out in blustery weather resetting yellow trash-catching booms used to corral tons of lawn clippings, toys, plastic bottles and sofas -- and tens of thousands of cigarette butts.

‘There is usually a delayed effect -- urban runoff tends to hit local shores about four to five hours after a good rain,’ he said while patrolling the area’s coastal wetlands in a white pickup truck with a twirling yellow light on top.

It didn’t take long for him to discover flaws in downtown rubbish control systems. At a small estuary known as Golden Shores Marine Reserve, a chain-link fence had been rammed by a floating tree that ripped a gaping hole in the mesh. A few blocks away at the Rainbow Harbor tourist complex, a boom was sagging beneath the surface of the water on one end.

‘I’m going to have to get down there and fix those things,’ he said, peering through binoculars from a pier just a stone’s throw from the Queen Mary. ‘After the last big rain we had, I collected 20,000 pounds of debris at Los Cerritos Wetlands alone.’

Occasionally, there are surprises in all that trash. ‘A few days ago, I noticed something glittering in the water at Rainbow Harbor. I scooped it up with my dip net. It was a bunch of jewelry -- mostly watches and gold and silver rings with opals and tiny diamonds mounted on them.’

Arkinstall is paid by the city to clean up nine coastal sites and parks. Separately, federal biologists and local officials have credited his volunteer work for making east Long Beach’s Los Cerritos Wetlands an environmental showcase.

‘I love this. I’m blessed,’ he said. ‘It keeps me brainstorming all the time to come up with inexpensive and innovative ways to deal with the problem.’

On Saturday, Arkinstall will help lead a monthly ‘Adopt a Wetlands Cleanup’ effort at the Golden Shores Marine Reserve. The public is invited to participate in the project sponsored by the El Dorado Nature Center. For more information call 562-570-4876.

-- Louis Sahagun