City's Creek Week kicks off Saturday

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

The City of Santa Barbara’s eighth annual Creek Week will kick off a flurry of activities at 10 a.m. today with the San Roque Creek Stewardship Project at Stevens Park.
The Stewardship Project will include information about planting and maintaining native plants in one’s own back yard and volunteers will be busy doing the same along San Roque Creek.

A statement from the city’s Creeks Division said the events of Creek Week will help community members “learn more about local creeks and watersheds through hands-on activities and volunteer vents including native planting, water quality monitoring, creek cleanups and more.”
On Wednesday at Muddy Waters Coffee House at 508 E. Haley St., a multimedia project put together by local youth called “Clean Water Media Lab” will be previewed. The statement says the project will allow locals to see creeks “through the lens of today’s youth, will be previewed.
The project was put together by local youths who documented creeks with cameras, video and art, the statement says. This show will run from 6 to 8 p.m.
A community forum called Marine Debris “Creeks to the Sea” will be held on Thursday from 6 to 8 pm. at the Cabrillo Pavilion at 1118 E. Cabrillo Blvd.
Guest speakers at the forum include Holly Lohuis, a marine biologist and diver with Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society and Marcus Eriksen from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
Next Saturday, a cleanup will take place at local creeks in order to prevent garbage and debre from washing to the ocean during winter rain storms. The cleanups will occur at Mission Lagoon, San Jose Creek, Devereux Creek and Isla Vista Beach.
Creek Week will wrap up on Sunday with an additional native planting effort at Arroyo Burro Estuary and Mesa Creek, which will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
An entire list of events and times are available at www.sbcreeks.com.