SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Footage taken in mid-January shows campsites turned into rivers due to flooding along the American River.

What You Need To Know

  • Huge amounts of camps lie abandoned from flooding along the Sacramento and American River 

  • The River City Waterway Alliance has collected over 120,000 pounds of waste

  • Much of the items in the camps were washed into river systems 

Much of the campsites where unhoused people were living along the banks remain abandoned and why David Ingram and other volunteers formed the River City Waterway Alliance to help clean it up.

“Unfortunately, they didn’t get a lot of their belongings out and that includes trash and personal possessions and things that have been swept away and dispersed because of the waters,” Ingram said.

Deer and other animals inhabit much of the area around the river. It is one reason the group is trying to help preserve the natural habitat.

“We pull out literally buckets of batteries,” Ingram said.

Needles are another big hazard at the camps, Ingram said the group comes across a lot.

“Bad thing about the needles is not just that they’re here, is that they float. We pull literally thousands of needles out of our waterways, creeks and rivers.”

Ingram said before they clean up an area, they realize the campsites used to be someone’s home and are careful to make sure they are abandoned.

“We’ve affirmed that it’s abandoned usually by park rangers and then we’ve also made sure ample opportunity for folks to take what they want out.”

Another volunteer, Dr. Roland Brady, a former professor who taught engineering geology and habitat restoration at Fresno State University, has done studies in the area on what leftover trash is doing to the riverbeds and the life they sustain.

“The other thing that physical trash does is armor the bed making an impermeable layer at the bottom of the channel and at some stage in their lifespan most aquatic organisms spend some time in the substrate, the bottom,” Brady said.

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Brady and Ingram said another reason it’s key to get to these abandoned areas quickly is the insecticide cans used by campers because of fleas that leech poisons, along with generators that leech oil and gasoline, into the environment.

Ingram estimates this clean-up will net around 5,00lbs of waste, bringing their total since they began to over 120,000lbs.

“And this is one small area of a humongous parkway that’s filled with similar sites,” Ingram said.

And why, Ingram said the group will forge on to do what they can to keep the wildlife from living in a dump.