‘Keeping it beautiful’: Baseball fans pitch in to Spokane River cleaning effort

Socks, tires, tampons – baseball fans and riverkeepers united Wednesday, sporting white and blue garbage bags and grabbers to pick up trash along the banks of the Spokane River.

Part of the Spokane Indians Baseball team’s “Redband Rally Campaign,” clearing beaches of debris is intended to support native redband trout populations, along with overall river health, said Otto Klein, vice president for the Indians.

“I think the river is one of the iconic things about the city that we live (in),” Klein said. “But I think we take it for granted a little bit, how beautiful it is. So, we want to try to do our part as the community’s baseball team to be leaders in the community and bring people together to help habitat on the Spokane River.”

While players were away for the week, the Indians’ front office staff and trout mascot Ribby attended the cleanup. Office staff have volunteered to clean up the river every couple years since the Redband Rally kicked off in 2017, but this year was the first that the event was advertised to the public, employee Bud Bareither said.

Lydia Gross, 25, was one volunteer. From Coeur d’Alene, Gross came to the Islands Trail Head off the Centennial Trail with friends she made at Indians baseball games.

“I think it’s a great community event,” Gross said. “It’s definitely because of just trying to keep our rivers – the water sources – clean.”

Waterkeeper for the Spokane River Jule Schultz said the cleanup event is only one part of a larger cleanup program put on by the Spokane Riverkeeper. Last year, 70,000 pounds of trash were removed from the river in total.

“The idea here is that we’re offering the community a time to clean up downtown and the river – get to know the river a little bit – but also get to know the riverkeeper and the Spokane Indians baseball teams’ Redband Rally,” Schultz said. “As we move towards a cleaner river, the community engagement is a huge part of that.”

Historically, the Spokane River was used as dumping grounds for the city. The waste, Schultz said, causes harm to wildlife, violates the clean water act and lowers public perception of the river.

“When you see a trashed river, it really says ‘No one cares about that river,’ he said. “But if you see people out there cleaning up the river, or a clean river that runs right through town, you understand the community cares for that river, right?”

Liberty Lake retiree Stephen Wieber, 70 was also part of the volunteer crew. He said that he regularly bikes the Centennial and picks up the bigger trash along his way.

“I’m kind of a very environmentally conscious type of person and I like socializing with people that do things that interest me as well, so it’s just a great sense of community,” Wieber said. “I’ve always been interested in the outdoors and keeping it beautiful.”

Wieber said that the majority of his finds were socks, tampons, cans and alcohol containers. Volunteer Kate Dwyer, 74, found mostly cigarette butts, while Bareither said he had stumbled across a “whole wardrobe” of clothes, including a single Jack Skellington flip-flop.

While cleanup efforts are great for community engagement, Schultz said, discouraging littering in the first place is a high priority for the Riverkeeper. The majority of trash making its way into the river is the result of homeless communities along the banks, he said.

“In some cases, these are people’s homes that are being washed away, essentially, if they’re camped down there,” Schultz said. “Now, we have an entire homeless outreach program where we float the river with CHAS Health and others such as Spokane Regional Health District and … give bags away, offer services and things like that.”

Historic and quirky trash also makes its way onto the riverbanks, though. Schultz recalls finding voodoo dolls, wagon wheels and kids’ makeshift boats in the water during other river cleanup events.

“There’s always sort of a crazy thing that you find, whether it’s like a voodoo doll that you almost step on that someone clearly threw into the river,” he said. “You know, you make up this story. It’s like, oh, this must have been a bad breakup and this represents sort of their, like, cleansing themselves of this issue.”

“Don’t throw your effigies in the river,” he added.

Klein said that the Indians plan to continue their community cleanups and make the event “the largest annual river cleanup event that the city’s ever known.”

“We just know that if we make it a priority that the community will make it a priority,” Klein said. “And so we’re going to advertise this annually bigger than we ever have and ask for Spokane to show up. And I know that they will.”