Community members from around Santa Cruz County and beyond pulled on gloves, grabbed litter pickers and other tools at more than 50 cleanup sites from Davenport to Watsonville on a sunny Saturday morning for the second annual Pitch In All County Clean Up Day.

Sen. John Laird, who serves as a member of the Senate’s committee on Natural Resources and Water, joined volunteers and other community leaders under the Soquel Avenue Bridge to talk about the importance of environmental stewardship and to give the crowd a brief history lesson about the formation of the San Lorenzo River levee.

“The four bridges across the river were all flat,” said Laird. “So in the 100-year storm in January of 1982, huge redwood logs battered this bridge down and at the time there was a water main connecting the two sides of town, and it was not a pretty thing when it came down. So you will notice that this bridge and the others are arched now.”

Find the full article here: https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2025/05/10/community-members-pitch-in…