In 2004, an informal group of Mesa County boaters decided to float down the Colorado River and pick up trash along the way. After two decades — and many tons of garbage — the now-annual effort to keep the river and its banks pristine continues this Saturday with a fleet of people on rafts, kayaks and paddleboards combing the long stretch of water between Palisade and Loma.
The Colorado River is the “lifeblood of Grand Junction,” said Ethan Ball, head of the 20th Annual Grand Valley River Cleanup. While there are many efforts to clean up waterways across the state, many focus on wilderness areas.
“This river cleanup is really special because it runs through the heart of our town,” he said.
Each spring, river runoff pushes sediment, debris and trash into the Colorado River near Grand Junction. Ball said the cleanup is timed to start when the river recedes and reveals a strange assortment of refuse that has collected along the banks.
And the river’s banks aren’t just polluted with rusted-out soda cans and sun-bleached potato-chip bags.
“We've found hot tubs, we've found couches,” Ball said. Photos from past cleanups also show mossy shopping carts, countless tires and a waterlogged stuffed dragon.
The cleanup also turns up remnants of campsites from unhoused residents. While Ball said participants would not dismantle someone’s dwelling, they would remove trash and other abandoned items.
The all-volunteer crew typically collects hundreds of pounds of garbage from the river and its banks. The volunteers use an armada watercraft to scour for trash. Larger boats become makeshift debris barges, while smaller vessels like duckies and canoes are piloted into hard-to-reach side channels.
Ball, who also works as the director of marketing for The Gear Junction, a downtown shop that’s sponsoring the event along with local nonprofits Grand Valley Paddling Club and RiversEdge West, estimates the cleanup will include about 60 volunteers. A celebratory barbecue is planned after all the dirty work is done.
People interested in helping must sign up by Friday. For Ball, who grew up about an hour away in Rifle, it’s heartening to watch river lovers put their heart into the Colorado River — one of the many waterways on the Western Slope that have made life possible for generations of Coloradans.
“It’s always such a treat to get out on the water with a group of like-minded people who are just there to make things a little bit better,” he said.
