Damien Grace made a harrowing discovery at Pinole Creek in November. A portion of a 3-foot-long PVC pipe was lodged in the muddy bed. Grace and five other volunteers picking up trash that day knew where the pipe had come from. Pipes like this are typically found on construction sites, not buried in a creek. Grace had to lie on the bank and stretch to reach the pipe. “I found the biggest treasure of the day!” Grace shouted. The team…
Vaccine appointments for children ages 5 to 11 were booked at all Contra Costa County Health Services sites this week, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month. As of Friday, more than 18,000 young children in the county had received a dose of the Pfizer vaccine, according to Health Services — about 1 in 5 children. While the CDC recommends kids to be vaccinated, some parents are still hesitant about it….
A state law mandating organic waste recycling will go into effect in Contra Costa County on Jan. 1. El Cerrito is drawing up plans on how it will implement the law. Organics like food scraps, yard trimmings, food-soiled paper and cardboard make up half of the trash in landfills and are the third-largest source of methane in California, according to California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. To reduce methane emissions, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law in 2016 establishing…
On Contra Costa County beaches and up and down the California coast on Saturday, volunteers armed with trash bags and garden gloves picked up cups, bottles, paper and all sorts of debris discarded on beaches. At Bayfront Park in Pinole, 14-year-old Josiah Ireton joined other Boy Scouts from Pinole and Hercules, laboriously hauling tires and filling bags with litter. “We found a lot of plastic straws, discarded food containers … and we found a lot of glass, especially on the…