Chronicle Watch
By Jim Herron Zamora
HELP WANTED: LAKE MERRITT Elegant but trashy: Many Oakland residents refer to Lake Merritt as the city's jewel. On Monday, it was easy to see why: The nearly 300-acre lake on the southeastern edge of downtown Oakland is an urban oasis and perhaps the city's most distinctive feature. The 3.4-mile trail around the lake is used each day by hundreds of walkers, joggers and cyclists. But it's even more popular with birds. The lake, which was originally a tidal lagoon off the Oakland Estuary, was formed in 1867 when a dam was built near 12th Street. It is believed to be the nation's oldest official wildlife refuge after it was designated the Lake Merritt Wild Duck Refuge in 1870. These days, there are still plenty of ducks there, both full-time residents and seasonal migrants. But the waterfowl share the lake with a lot of foul-smelling trash, especially in the winter. ChronicleWatch visited a group of cleanup volunteers at the lake last week and watched as another volunteer, Bob Weis, skimmed the lake with a long-handled net and removed about a dozen empty, plastic water bottles, along with candy wrappers and plastic bags. Every year, volunteers and city employees remove 20 to 25 tons of trash and other waste such as tree branches and wood debris from the lake, according to the Lake Merritt Institute. Some of the garbage is dumped directly into the lake by litterers, but most of it comes from storm drains or is blown in during storms. The city and the institute sponsor two cleanups a week: Every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 10 a.m., and they need volunteers during this winter season to keep up with the volume of trash and expected storms. For more information, contact Dick Bailey at (510) 238-2290 or lmi@netwiz.net. Visit his group's Web site at www.lakemerrittinstitute.org/Help.html. Who's co-sponsoring it: Raul Godinez II, Oakland public works director, (510) 238-3961; rgodinez@oaklandnet.com Is something broken in your neighborhood? Call us at (415) 777-7170 or e-mail us at chroniclewatch@sfchronicle.com. For more ChronicleWatch, see our blog at sfgate.com/chroniclewatch. This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle |
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