Green Team 94803 Takes on Downtown Planters.
We are working with Dorcas Moulton and the Chamber to beautify downtown ES and revive the SPDR planters. After a review, we found that several businesses take beautiful care of their plants, while others are left untended. The Chamber provides pots and soil, and we have the plants. The problem is water. Not all businesses have spigots we can access. Each pot takes several gallons times 30 pots equals a lot of running back and forth with heavy buckets. If your downtown business can help with water access, or adopting a few planters to water, please call or text Chris at 510-685-8163. More info on our website, KeepElSobranteBeautiful.info, or the Chamber’s blog page.
Green Team 94803 works in coalition with other groups and collaborates with our County Supervisor, agencies and interested community members. The El Sobrante library hosts our Third Saturday Cleanup at 10am each month and SOS Richmond liaisons with our unhoused neighbors. Our website, KeepElSobranteBeautiful.info, is updated regularly with a calendar of upcoming events, information about how to dispose of old items (often for free), and other useful information and organizing tools.
Our NextDoor social media posts keep reminding the community about those resources and our cleanup activities. That is how we organized the campaign to get the gigantic illegal dump near the San Pablo reservoir cleaned up. Thanks to Supervisor Gioia and Richmond Council Member Bana for making sure this was handled quickly. Now we hope to help track down the culprits and would love to see them prosecuted and fined to cover the costs of their illegal dumping crimes.
We are a regular presence at the ES MAC meetings and work closely with the ES MAC Cleanup and Beautification Subcommittee to advance our goals. Since we are a private group of volunteers, we can be faster and more flexible in handling issues that arise. One reason for that is our very active WhatsApp network, with a Green Team 94803 community and a number of task-oriented threads, like El Sobrante Heroes Adopt-A-Road, downtown planters and special events like Earth Day and Coastal Cleanup Day.
In short, we have a lot going on and are always seeking help and advice from volunteers, local businesses and community partners.
Most importantly at the moment, our effort is to restore the downtown planters and to get businesses to provide public trash cans and ash trays. The big trash cans have all been removed from SP Dam Rd. due to vandalism and damage. While we figure that problem out, we are asking for businesses to put a small trash can and a bucket with sand at their door so that patrons and passers-by can dispose of trash and cigarette butts without littering. No single business wants to spring for big trash cans or to cover the cost of disposal, but if multiple businesses put out a small can they can dispose of with their regular trash, that would be a big help.
El Sobrante is a small town wrapped-up in beautiful environs. The more our local businesses engage with Green Team 94803, the more effective we can be in keeping El Sobrante clean and beautiful.