Bay City Tribune

Almost 300 volunteers gathered at Matagorda County beaches to participate in the 23rd Annual Texas Adopt-a-Beach Fall Cleanup Saturday, Sept. 26.

The effort at Matagorda Beach included 193 volunteers who collected 10,000-pounds of garbage from a 5-mile stretch of beach.

The Sargent Beach cleanup resulted in 11,961-pounds of garbage collected by 93 volunteers.

Matagorda County's 286 volunteers were only a small portion of the more than 8,200 Adopt-A-Beach participants who removed nearly 217 tons of trash off more than 194 miles of Texas coast.

The Texas General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach Cleanup is an all-volunteer effort to remove trash from Texas' shores.

Coastal cleanups are held three times each year and the program's success is due to the hard work of volunteers, including local coordinators who work many unpaid hours publicizing the cleanups in coastal communities.

Since 1986, more than 390,000 Adopt-A-Beach volunteers have picked up more than 7,500 tons of trash from Texas beaches, some of it originating from as far away as South America.

Volunteers record data on the trash to learn more about the causes of marine debris and to help mitigate pollution along Texas' 367 miles of coastline.

Several organizations and family groups attended the Matagorda cleanup.

This year, OXEA chemical company donated 10 $25 Wal-Mart gift cards to be given as door prizes for the volunteers.

The gift cards were given to the volunteer that lived the furthest from Matagorda, the youngest volunteer and the person who found the most unusual item on the beach while the rest were hidden as buried treasure to be recovered from the beach.

The volunteers who made the longest trip to attend the Matagorda Beach Cleanup were Bryce and Katelyn Hurta, siblings from Onalaska, Tex.

The pair traveled about 160 miles from home to attend the event with their family members from Collegeport who make Matagorda Beach cleanup an annual occasion.

The youngest beach cleanup volunteer was two-year-old Fallon Gauranovic, of Boling.

Fallon attended with her mother, an OXEA employee.

The "most unusual item found" award went to Adriana Hilliard, a Bay City Junior High student, who recovered a brand new, in-working-order Gameboy game.

The Sargent Beach cleaners noticed an unusual amount of plastic bottles with Spanish print among the items they retrieved.

At Adopt-A-Beach sites across the coast, volunteers reported discovering many odd and unusual items during the cleanup, including a military duffle bag full of camo and shotgun shells, two TV sets, a mattress, a washing machine, a carport, dentures, underwear, a plastic cup with "Don't Litter, Keep Texas Clean" printed on it, a $5 bill, a teddy bear, a duck decoy and cell phone parts.

Volunteers at both beach cleanups were treated to lunch after a morning of litter collecting.

Sargent volunteers went home with souvenir caps commemorating the event and Matagorda Beach participants were given official event beach bags.

The success of the Adopt-A-Beach Program is made possible by the generous efforts of dedicated volunteers and the strong support of community leaders and sponsors across the state.

Matagorda County Adopt-a-Beach 2009 sponsors were: Sargent's Bam Bam Jamboree, Lower Colorado River Authority, Stanley Food Market, Riverbend Restaurant, OXEA and South Texas Plant Nuclear Operating Company.

This year the Adopt-A-Beach Program thanks its lead statewide Fall Cleanup sponsor, Shell Oil Company.

Other statewide sponsors are the Newfield Foundation, the Ocean Conservancy, Flint Hills Resources Community Action Council, Halliburton and Johnson Controls.

The next coastwide cleanup will be the Spring Adopt-A-Beach effort scheduled for April 24, 2010.