Meet Petaluma's 'rebel with a trash bag'

<p>Anne Castellon was simply fed up with the conditions of Petaluma's Lucchesi Park pond.</p><p>“I've fished out eight dead fish, three geese, seven gulls, 10 ducks — all dead and floating in the water,” she said about her park visits this year.</p><p>She was also tired of cleaning up after other people who apparently can't be bothered to deposit their rubbish in the city trash bins.</p><p>So Thursday, the in-home caregiver who likes to take her 88-year-old client to the community park on outings, decided a little unofficial volunteerism was in order.</p><p>The Santa Rosa resident donned a hazmat-type protective jumpsuit and gloves, inflated a small boat and rowed out into the pond to begin collecting floating debris.</p><p>Within a few minutes, she was told by a city employee that she wasn't allowed in the lake. When Castellon said she wasn't coming out, the person said she'd call police.</p><p>Two officers arrived at Lucchesi about an hour later and left after about 15 minutes, never approaching Castellon. Lt. Tim Lyons said no city laws prevent floating on the algae-filled pond, or even swimming if one wanted to.</p><p>After a couple of hours, Castellon, her husband, Albert, and her brother, Walt Bagley, had amassed several large garbage bags filled with all manner of flotsam and jetsam: a soccer ball, numerous water bottles and picnic plates, multiple frisbees, various plastic wrappings, a shoe, a Capri Sun foil juice bag, some packing foam, several zip-top bags, wads of fishing line and other unidentifiable trash.</p><p>She also bagged one dead fish and two dead birds, a duck and a gull. A large garbage can, pieces of wood and what appeared to be a pallet remain submerged in the shallow pond, she said.</p><p>Castellon said she'd been contemplating her plucky cleanup effort for more than a year.</p><p>“It's gross,” she said while out on the water. “I knew it would be.”</p><p>“What, you can't walk 10 feet to throw your stuff away?” she asked rhetorically, picking up a red plastic cup with a yard-long grabber.</p><p>Castellon said she was prepared to be cited by the police, if necessary, because she feels so strongly about the clean-up. The pond is one of her elderly client's limited options for outside exercise and she wanted to make it safer.</p><p>She said she complained numerous times to the city, but never saw much improvement. So, she brought the boat with her Thursday.</p><p>“I'm a rebel with a trash bag,” she quipped.</p><p>City parks and landscape manager Ron DeNicola said his crew is doing the best it can, but parks staff has been decimated by budget cuts in the past two years.</p><p>What used to be a staff of 17, including seasonal help, is down to seven, he said, to cover the whole city's parks.</p><p>Parks staff retrieve trash when it can be reached from the pond shores, but there is no firm maintenance schedule, he said.</p><p>The top priorities are restrooms at city fields and the fields themselves because of their heavy use.</p><p>“We have to focus on them for safety reasons,” he said. “Then try to get to everything else when we can.”</p><p>Albert Castellon said several people Thursday gave him their phone numbers and volunteered to help in future efforts.</p><p>Assistant City Manager Scott Brodhun said organized volunteer efforts are welcome, and those interested should call the city's Parks and Recreation Department at 778-4380.</p>