Groups Restore Parts of San Lorenzo Creek
Some of the items dumped into Crow Creek near where it meets San Lorenzo Creek, near Grove Way in Castro Valley.
Rights to a section of San Lorenzo Creek near Grove Way in Castro Valley were returned to a local indigenous tribe, while dozens of volunteers cleaned up a separate section of the waterway this past week.
Volunteers from the nonprofit groups Forestr.org and RISE (Rising Into Self Empowerment) came on Saturday, November 30 to the confluence of San Lorenzo Creek, Crow Creek, and the creek running from Don Castro Park to haul out trash. Dozens of shopping carts were pulled out, along with some home appliances and many tires.
A little more than a mile downstream, the ancestral caretakers of what is now called San Lorenzo Creek got three acres of it back, it was announced on Monday, November 25. Eden Housing, which is building apartments nearby, returned the portion of the stream between Crescent Avenue and A Street to the Lisjan Nation.
Lisjan Nation Tribal Chairwoman Corrina Gould said in a release, “My people are named for this waterway, my ancestors would gather here. This place is important for our cultural and environmental restoration work.”
Indigenous people had known the stream as Lisjan Creek.
The return is the first of a waterway to the Lisjan Nation, also known as the Ohlone, according to a spokesperson for the tribe.
The land will be received by the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an indigenous women-led group that is slowly “re-matriating” land once seized by European settlers back to the original tribal groups. Other small parcels in Oakland and Richmond have been returned over the last few years.
An official ceremony marking the return of the waters and creekside land was scheduled yesterday, November 3 at the site.
Cleaning the Creek for a Purpose
Among those volunteers helping with the cleanup upstream on Saturday were several currently homeless people and some formerly unhoused people who had once lived along Crow Creek in particular.
Yon Hardisty, founder of Forestr.org, said that some blamed dehoused people for messes near creeks.
“But we find them excellent partners,” he said. “We help incentivize cleaning by paying people $5 per bag of trash pulled out, and $10 for each shopping cart.
“We don’t ask who, why or how. If we see trash, we pick it up,” Hardisty added. “But we also try to fix the land and move its products along to those who need them.” That includes Dig Deep Farms, food banks and community organizations.
Melissa Moore founded and heads RISE, whose membership is largely homeless. She said people were returning to their former homes on Saturday to clean up a bit.
She is a Castro Valley native who lived along Crow Creek for seven years, before being moved out by Caltrans in 2019, she said.
She subsequently found housing and a job before starting the nonprofit.
“We want to empower people to be self-sufficient,” she said. “When people talk about putting the homeless in contact with help, they often don’t know that probably 98 percent are signed up for help. But it’s a waiting game.”
You can get more information about the groups mentioned at sogoreate-landtrust.org, edenhousing.org andwww.forestr.org. RISE is currently setting up a website, but Moore posts on both LinkedIn.com and Facebook.