Editor’s note: The San Antonio Report is pleased to feature the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report. We’ll be publishing a brief synopsis of the podcast each Tuesday.
Since 1994, Basura Bash has gathered San Antonians across the city for one purpose: to clean trash out of local creeks and rivers.
This year, the event will be organized by River Aid San Antonio, a relatively new nonprofit organization with the mission of keeping the city’s waterways clean.
River Aid San Antonio Executive Director Charles Blank told bigcitysmalltown podcast host Robert Rivard that he and his team of volunteers are excited to orchestrate the event this year and hope to expand it.
Launched in late 2021, 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 and launching several student-led cleanups in partnership with local universities along with becoming the official organizer of Basura Bash.
“[Basura Bash] has been going on for 29 years strong, and it’s a grassroots effort, which is why I’ve been so impressed with it,” Blank said. “That’s why it inspired River Aid when we were coming up with our system to address litter in our waterways.”
The event, which has typically seen between 1,500 and 4,000 volunteers participate, will be on Feb. 17. This year marks the 29th Basura Bash, which paused for a year due to the pandemic. Individual volunteers or a team can register here.
Blank said volunteers last year pulled roughly 20 tons, or 40,000 pounds, of trash out of the San Antonio River watershed — roughly half of what the city staff cleaned up in total last year.
Basura Bash started as a small backyard cleanup event, Sonia Jiménez told Rivard. Jiménez, deputy director of the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, is a founding member of Basura Bash. The event grew out of an event planned by the San Jose Neighborhood Association, she said.
Under Blank’s management, the event has added new locations, gained additional funding and has garnered 1,600 volunteers and counting, Jiménez noted. Blank said he and his team of volunteers hope to grow the event — perhaps even having additional Basura Bashes throughout the year.
“We’re going to be sitting down with [the city], with parks and recreation and solid waste, and we’re going to be discussing [a fall event],” Blank said. “We do not have full details on that yet, but we are going to figure out some way to keep the mass-energy of Basura Bash going on more than once a year.”
Visit bigcitysmalltown to listen to Episode 42 featuring River Aid San Antonio Executive Director Charles Blank, or listen at the link below.
