Volunteers needed to clean up Russian River beaches

Before everyone else hits the Russian River with their sunscreen and water toys this Sunday, a crew of more than 100 volunteers is slated to converge on five beaches for an intensive cleanup effort.

It’s just two hours but long enough to make a dent in the litter that amasses during high season, when warm weather brings thousands of people to the river for refreshment ?each weekend.

The 10 a.m. Russian River Beautification project will be combined with a fundraising raffle benefiting the Clean River Alliance. Since its founding in 2014, the nonprofit stewardship group has hauled well over 170,000 pounds of trash from the river, its tributaries and the ocean beaches where garbage washed downstream often gets deposited.

Erik Wagner, a barber from Healdsburg, is one of 20 people in a personal development group that organized Sunday’s cleanup as a public service project, in conjunction with the Clean River Alliance and its sponsor, the Russian Riverkeeper. He said nearly 200 people had already signed up to participate.

In addition to removing litter from the beaches, one of the goals is to raise $20,000 for the Alliance to help defray dump fees through the raffle.

“We’re all passionate about the river and supportive of the project,” Wagner said.

Cleanup locations will include Cloverdale River Beach, Sunset Beach in Forestville and Monte Rio Beach.

Volunteers are still needed at each of the three locations, the Clean River Alliance said.

Enough people already have signed up to work at Steelhead Beach and Healdsburg Veterans Memorial Beach, organizers said.

“There’s still a little more cleanup to do this year, post-flood kind of stuff,” Clean River Alliance founder Chris Brokate said. “We had to put off a couple of (earlier) cleanups, river-based ones, because of the (high) flows.”

Sunday’s work event runs from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday and is followed at 1 p.m. by a volunteer appreciation party at the Villa Chanticleer Picnic Grounds, 900 Chanticleer Way, in Healdsburg.