When Athena Santos started picking up trash out of San Antonio’s creeks and waterways three years ago with River Aid San Antonio, the native local was just looking for a fun way to get out of the house during the pandemic.
Instead, Santos found her comunidad, a group of like-minded volunteers who made her Saturdays picking up crumpled beer cans and torn-up Whataburger cups something to look forward to each week.
Along with more than 2,500 volunteers Saturday, Santos — who’s since participated in more than 75 River Aid cleanups and is now one of the organization’s board members — braved the latest cold front and 15 mph wind gusts to participate in the city’s 29th annual Basura Bash.
Easy to spot in a highlighter yellow jacket, the 36-year-old both celebrated and lamented the cleanup effort.
“We are never able to get all the trash at a single spot,” Santos said. “There’s just so much. We get as much as we can, but you’ll hear us saying, like, ‘OK, we’ll be back for that tire over there!’ or ‘Next time we can get that mattress!'”
Accompanied by her long-term boyfriend, Simon Nicholson, and her mom, Margie Santos, a first-time River Aid cleanup participant, Santos helped clean Martinez Creek, just one of the 23 local tributaries River Aid selected for the event.
Basura Bash has grown out of the small backyard cleanup event first planned by the San Jose Neighborhood Association in 1994. River Aid’s participation in the event has grown, too, with this being the first year it has hosted it.
The growing organization had a landmark year in 2023, getting $25,000 from Bexar County, securing a contract with the City of San Antonio to clean Woodlawn Lake monthly, launching several student-led cleanups in partnership with local universities and becoming the official organizer of Basura Bash.
Under the direction of River Aid San Antonio’s Executive Director Charles Blank, the event added new locations, gained additional funding and garnered many new volunteers for its 29th year.
Blank said he was excited to see the high turnout rate Saturday despite temperatures in the low 40s.
“The [Basura Bash] website actually crashed last night because so many people were trying to register,” he said. “We had about 2,650 registered, but we think we’ll creep up closer to the 3,000 range by the end of the morning.”
In 2022, Basura Bash had 1,573 participants, and last year saw about 2,000.
County Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4), who read a county proclamation Saturday to kick off Basura Bash, said the event is a great way for residents to see how individuals can impact the local environment for better or worse.
“We have a lot of illegal dumping that happens that we just want people to have an understanding of what is going on so that they will feel that civic duty” to dispose of trash properly, he said.
Calvert added he’d like to see the city and county install nets in some of the waterways to help catch the trash going into local tributaries.
Santos said she and the other River Aid board members hope to see the event continue to grow under their purview, adding only half-jokingly that she’d love to see the event moved to a warmer part of the year such as during Fiesta, when the city becomes rife with trash.
“It would be so cool to see it become an official Fiesta event,” she said.
Margie Santos said she is proud of her daughter’s commitment to her home city and added that Athena has inspired their whole family to live greener lives.
“We used to have the big trash can from the city and the small recycling bin but now we have those switched,” Margie Santos said. “She’s really into the environment.”
Athena Santos said while she loves River Aid, her dream is for it one day to no longer be necessary in San Antonio. It starts with individuals taking personal responsibility and throwing their trash away responsibly, rather than illegally dumping it or littering, she said.
“You might think, ‘It’s just one cigarette butt. How bad can it be?'” she said. “But that can make its way into our creeks and rivers, and even all the way down to the coast.”
