No matter how much Bayeudave hunts, his quarry will not disappear. He finds it every time he embarks on Buffalo Bayou. Buffalo Bayou is a slow river that runs through the country’s fourth largest city and towards its harbor. And it was a recent hot and humid morning that he and his longtime deck hand, Tray Dennis, headed for a small barge towards the floating boom that broke out on the water the day before.
“Oh, it’s not that sweet,” said Bayeux Dave, whose real name is David Rivers, when the boom began to appear.
Embraced by the boom’s massive hug was what they were looking for and knew they would find: a huge swirling trash of trash.
There was a toy plane, a yellow football, a carton of foam eggs, and a pink flip-flop in a nail salon. There were 7-Eleven and Chick-fil-A takeaway containers, disposable dental picks, and Styrofoam cups. Best of all, there were PET bottles that once filled with water, Coca-Cola, Gatrade, Sprite, Armor All Multipurpose Car Cleaner, and Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey.
Mr. Rivers moved the barge to the garbage island. It’s about the size of a tennis court and represents some of the trash that flows through Bayeux every day. And he and Mr Dennis got to work.
Over 200 square miles of Houston’s vast city streets flow into Buffalo Bayou and one of its tributaries, White Oak Bayou, and spills from all storms and rainfall bring all kinds of abandoned debris into the water. increase.
Rivers and Dennis are one of the few people who regularly intercept garbage before heading to the Gulf of Mexico.
Using a juury rigging suction device made with the help of duct tape, They carry the equivalent About 250 garbage bags fill up every week from Bayeux and the waterways near it.
Maia Corbitt, president of the Texans for Clean Water, described the pair as “our last line of defense” before garbage flowed into Galveston Bay through two ecologically sensitive estuaries.Robbie Robinson, Field Operations Manager Buffalo Bayou PartnershipThe pair’s employers described their work as “endless, thankful, unpaid.”
“You just have to be a special person,” Robinson said.
For Mr. Rivers, working on Bayeux is a call. He has been cleaning the waterways almost every week for the past 12 years. Few are more accustomed to the inhabitants and their health.
Earlier this year, Rivers was pleased to reassure the first snake he saw in Bayeux since Hurricane Harvey wiped out much of the wildlife in 2017. He enjoys the noisy colors that flock to the banks of Bayeux every spring and autumn. He enthusiastically waxes various birds, rescues baby turtles from the trash can, and mourns the fish killed by regular blue-green algae.
“I’m concerned about the entire ecosystem,” said Rivers, 51. “Animals are not the cause of pollution, but they are directly affected by it.”
Growing up in South Acres, Houston’s hard bite district, Rivers was a follower of the nature show “Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Mutual” and later “Crocodile Hunter”.
Before he was hired to work in Bayeux in 2010, he did a series of tasks such as stockpiling shelves at the target, repairing railroad tracks, guards, landscape architects, and cleaning up toxic spills after Hurricane Katrina. did.
Until 2015, when Dennis embarked, the spinning cast served as a barge deck hand for Bayeudave. Dennis, a former high school football player who grew up in Mississippi, worshiped the physicality of his work. “I’m saving 16 bottles at a time, one bottle in the world,” said Dennis, 30, who Rivers nicknamed Country Slim. “This is the best way for children to stay healthy in the long run.”
Buffalo Bayou is about 18,000 years old It has been saved Because environmentalists were artificially rerouted more than half a century ago with the help of then-new congressman George HW Bush. In the 1980s, the non-profit Buffalo Bayou Partnership was formed to maintain and create green spaces and hiking and cycling trails along 10 miles of Bayou, about 52 miles. About 20 years later, Mike Gerber, a member of the board of directors, introduced a barge that sucks up floating debris. After becoming a captain, Rivers helped with the redesign.
Rivers and Dennis collect Bayeux trash, down to the arts.
The tank that saves their Bayou is a rusted, mottled 30-foot barge. The hardtop Bimini has no seats on the barge, so it covers the rudder, which is the only concession to human comfort. A foot-width vacuum hose rests on its bow and is duct taped to another giant hose that feeds the containment area under the deck.
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Not long ago, early Thursday, Rivers and Dennis both slipped into life jackets, wearing long-sleeved shirts, trousers, and work boots despite the heat. Mr. Rivers has a wide circumference and a few teeth are missing. Dennis is supple and muscular.
Looking at the captain little by little, Mr. Rivers turned his barge towards the edge of the boom and steered a rippling, trashy mantle with his approach. Switched on, a roar filled the air, and guided by Mr Dennis, the hose began sucking plastic and styrofoam like a giant, greedy slinky. Dennis grabbed the rake and jumped off, guiding the trash towards the hose mau. There was a lot of sweat on his eyebrows, moistening the back of the blue button-down.
From time to time, they stopped to rescue intact toys (toy planes, soccer) and later give them to children in the neighborhood.
Beyond the vacuum cleaner, five dozen blackbirds picked up the tramp, but outside the boom, a plastic bottle bob downstream. Rivers and Dennis position the boom based on the flow, but they can’t get close to catching all the trash. They work eight hours a day, but it can take months to patrol the entire 14 miles they are tasked with cleaning.
The wind changed and the rotting odor wrapped the barge.
“Now that smell, it’s called bayou potpourri,” Rivers shouted. Shortly thereafter, his seam, where Horse met the barge, broke and splattered on the deck, splattering chunky brown bayou juice. “She is nauseating, Tray,” River said and vacuumed.
Dennis jumped on the deck and used several layers of duct tape to quickly repair the cracks. About an hour later, the deck hatch began to tear the styrofoam pellets and spit out the spotted brown material. The containment area was full and required unloading.
Last year, the Buffalo Bayou Partnership withdrew 2,000 cubic yards of garbage (equivalent to the cargo of 167 commercial dump trucks) from the waterways. In addition to the efforts of Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis, a second team, usually composed of people sentenced to community services, uses the net and pickers to clean corners and hard-to-reach areas on the banks of Bayeux. increase. Rivers keeps a list of the strangest things he has found. A basketball stand and hoop, multiple sofas, and a shredded money bag. He was joking that he saw everything except the kitchen sink until he also found the kitchen sink a few years ago.
In the early days of the pandemic, Rivers and Dennis saw a sharp drop in the amount of trash because people weren’t littering, but then the amount has returned. Everything they pull out is sent to the landfill. Over the years, some recyclers have offered to carry some of Bayeux’s trash, but Robinson said they would balk when they saw it in person. “It’s a mixture of organic matter, water and silt, and it’s not really recyclable,” he said.
The obvious solution is to prevent garbage from reaching Bayeux in the first place.Rivers and Robinson are rooting State bottle bill, It will motivate people to return containers for money. According to data compiled by the Container Recycling Institute 7 out of 10 states with bottle invoices, Beverage container waste has been reduced by 84%. “When it’s not worth it, no one cares and it flows into the ocean,” Robinson said.
Meanwhile, Buffalo Bayou has made Rivers the champion.He Posted videos He introduced the trash-filled Bayeux online and appeared in the local media with The Kelly Clarkson Show. Interview with guest host Jay Leno.. He fills the ears of people on boat tours with the method and reason where all the trash comes from.
That recent morning, Rivers and Dennis took a brief inventory of their handicrafts. In the boom, Bayeux’s water flowed easily, removing most of the plastic and Styrofoam, at least for now.
“But don’t worry,” Rivers said, looking for more gomi and guiding the barge upstream. “More are coming.”