CH2M Hill Employees with the Save the Bay Shark

Saturday, August 13th, I had the pleasure of joining other staff from my CH2M Hill Oakland, CA and NBC Bay Area Proud at the Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline in Oakland, CA for the 50th Anniversary of  Save the Bay.  The event was also in collaboration with the Oakland Throw Down for the Town, which included over 20 other services projects throughout the city. 

Volunteers along the shoreline

Save the Bay is a great organization started by 3 bay area women 50 years ago.  They set out to protect the bay from becoming a river and led the way for bay shoreline restoration and preservation.  Our task on Saturday morning was to locate invasive species (see post on Zebra Mussels) on the levees along the shoreline of the bay near the Oakland airport.  The volunteers were separated into teams based on the needs of the area.  There was a team collecting trash.  Although the best time to collect is in the rainy season, when all those discarded Taco Bell hot sauce wrappers are washed into the storm drain system, the group still came up with quite a bit of trash.  I was part of the invasive species removal team for the wetlands restoration area like the blogger for the  Save the Bay Blog.  We were tasked with finding and removing a plant called English Plantain (not to be confused with tasty banana-like food).

CH2M Hill Employees picking English Plantain from the shoreline

After we wrapped up our tasks, all the volunteers joined staff from Save the Bay to Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Save the Bay for some fun an festivities.  The festivities included: badminton (haven’t played since high school gym class), bowling, photo booth with the Save the Bay shark (I have a great video of him dancing to post somewhere), mimosas or wine from Barefoot Wine, food, fake Save the Bay tattoo application and a raffle (where I surprisingly won something!).

As always, I encourage everyone to get out there and volunteer.  There are great websites like serve.gov that help link volunteers with organizations that need their help.  Check it out!

• Tuesday, September 14 through Thursday, September 16, 5-7 PM or 4- 6 or 7PM
• Saturday, September 18 through Sunday, September 19, Noon- 2 PM

This survey and count is an effort to overcome one of the greatest challenges facing the bicycle and pedestrian field; the lack of documentation on usage and demand. This data is needed to increase investment in these fields. This nationwide effort will provide data for use by planners, governments, and bicycle and pedestrian professionals.

For more information about how to volunteer and help with this effort, go to the National Project Website.

Typical volunteer activities will include:

* A brief Volunteer Training

* A 2-3 hour traffic count and half hour of survey distribution

In Portland, you can volunteer by contacting April Bertelsen, Pedestrian Coordinator, 503-823-6177, april.bertelsen@portlandoregon.gov.