Saving a Texan Bayou, ‘16 Bottles’ at a Time

Regardless of how a lot Bayou Dave hunts, his quarry by no means goes away. He finds it every time he units out on Buffalo Bayou, a sluggish shifting river that wends by way of the nation’s fourth largest metropolis and out to its port. And so it was one current sweltering morning when he and his longtime deckhand, Trey Dennis, headed on a small barge to a floating increase they’d set out on the water the day earlier than.

“Ah, isn’t that candy,” stated Bayou Dave, whose actual title is David Rivers, because the increase swung into view.

Cradled within the increase’s large embrace was what they had been in search of, and knew they’d discover: an enormous whorling jumble of trash.

There was a toy airplane, a yellow soccer, a foam egg carton and a nail salon pink flip-flop. There have been takeout containers, disposable dental picks and foam cups from 7-11 and Chick-fil-A. Greater than anything, there was plastic — bottles that after held water, Coca-Cola, Gatorade, Sprite, Armor All multipurpose automobile cleaner and Fireball cinnamon whiskey.

Mr. Rivers maneuvered the barge over to the island of rubbish — as massive as a tennis courtroom, it represented a fraction of the trash that flows by way of the bayou every day — and he and Mr. Dennis set to work.

Greater than 200 sq. miles of Houston’s sprawling city streets drain into Buffalo Bayou and one in all its tributaries, White Oak Bayou, with the runoff from each storm and rainfall carrying all method of tossed and misplaced particles to the waters.

Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis are among the many handful of people that usually intercept the rubbish earlier than it finds its strategy to the Gulf of Mexico.

Utilizing a jury-rigged suction gadget crafted with the assistance of duct tape, they haul the equal of about 250 full rubbish baggage out of the Bayou and its close by waterways every week.

Maia Corbitt, president of Texans for Clear Water, described the pair as “our final line of protection” earlier than the trash flows by way of two ecologically delicate estuaries and into Galveston Bay. Robby Robinson, the sector operations supervisor for Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the pair’s employer, described their work as “limitless, thankless, no reward.”

“You simply gotta be a particular particular person,” Mr. Robinson stated.

For Mr. Rivers, engaged on the Bayou is a calling. He’s been cleansing up its waterways just about each weekday for the previous dozen years. Few persons are extra attuned to its inhabitants and its well being.

Earlier this yr Mr. Rivers noticed, to his delight and reduction, the primary snakes he’s seen on the bayou since Hurricane Harvey worn out a lot of its wildlife in 2017. He revels within the riotous colours that crowd the bayou’s banks every spring and fall, waxes rapturous about its assorted birds, rescues child turtles from rafts of trash, and mourns the fish killed by periodic algal blooms.

“It’s the entire ecosystem I’m involved about,” stated Mr. Rivers, 51. “The animals aren’t liable for the air pollution. However they’re instantly affected by it.”

Rising up in South Acres, a tough bitten Houston neighborhood, Mr. Rivers was a devotee of the character present “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and, later, “The Crocodile Hunter.”

He labored a collection of jobs — stocking cabinets at Goal, mending railroad tracks, working as a safety guard, landscaper and cleansing up poisonous spills after Hurricane Katrina — earlier than getting employed to work on the bayou in 2010.

A rotating forged served as deckhands on Bayou Dave’s barge till 2015, when Mr. Dennis got here aboard. A former highschool soccer participant who grew up in Mississippi, Mr. Dennis adored the physicality of the job. “I’m saving the world one bottle, OK, by 16 bottles, at a time,” stated Mr. Dennis, 30, who Mr. Rivers nicknamed Nation Slim. “That is the easiest way for our youngsters in the long term to remain wholesome too.”

Buffalo Bayou is about 18,000 years outdated, and was saved from being artificially rerouted greater than half a century in the past, when environmentalists enlisted the assistance of George H.W. Bush, then a brand new congressman. Within the Nineteen Eighties, the nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership was shaped to keep up and create inexperienced areas and mountain climbing and biking trails alongside 10 miles of the roughly 52-mile bayou. About twenty years later, a board member, Mike Garver, launched a barge that suctioned up floating rubbish, which Mr. Rivers later helped redesign after he turned its captain.

Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis have bayou trash retrieval all the way down to an artwork.

Their bayou-saving chariot is a 30-foot barge mottled with rust. A hardtop bimini shades its helm, a lone concession to human consolation, for the barge has no seats. A foot-wide vacuum hose rests on its bow, mounted with duct tape to a different large hose that feeds a containment space beneath deck.

Early one Thursday not way back, Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis, each in long-sleeve shirts, pants, and work boots regardless of the warmth, slipped into life vests. Mr. Rivers is wider in girth;Mr. Dennis is lithe and muscled.

Wanting each bit the ocean captain, Mr. Rivers steered the barge to the sting of the increase, the thick mantle of rubbish undulating on his strategy. A swap was flipped, a roar stuffed the air, and, and, guided by Mr. Dennis, the hose started sucking up plastic and Styrofoam like a large, ravenous Slinky. Mr. Dennis grabbed a rake and hopped all the way down to information the trash towards the hose’s maw. Dots of sweat appeared on his forehead, and dampened the again of his blue button-down.

From time to time they paused to salvage intact toys — the toy airplane, the soccer — to present later to neighborhood youngsters.

Past the vacuum’s attain, half a dozen blackbirds picked by way of the flotsam, whereas exterior the increase, plastic bottles bobbed downstream. Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis place the booms primarily based on currents, however can’t come near catching all of the trash. Although they work eight hours a day, it’d take months to patrol your entire 14 miles they’re tasked with cleansing.

The wind shifted, and an odor of rot enveloped the barge.

“Proper now, that odor, that’s known as bayou potpourri,” Mr. Rivers hollered over the din. Not lengthy after that, a seam the place the hose met the barge cut up open, splattering the deck, with sludgy brown Bayou juice. “She’s feeling nauseous, Trey,” Mr. Rivers known as out, and turned off the vacuum.

Mr. Dennis hopped up on deck, and swiftly mended the crack with a number of layers of duct tape. An hour or so later, a hatch within the deck started spitting out bits of brown matter flecked with torn up Styrofoam pellets: the containment space was full and wanted offloading.

Buffalo Bayou Partnership pulled 2,000 cubic yards of trash — the equal of 167 business dump truck masses — out of the waterways final yr. Together with the efforts of Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis, a second staff, normally consisting of individuals sentenced to neighborhood service, makes use of nets and pickers to scrub more durable to succeed in nooks and the bayou’s banks. Mr. Rivers retains an inventory of the weirdest issues he discovered: a basketball stand and hoop, a number of couches, baggage of shredded cash. He used to joke that he’d seen every thing however the kitchen sink, till a couple of years in the past after they discovered a kind of, too.

In the course of the earlier days of the pandemic, Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis noticed the quantity of rubbish plummet, as a result of folks weren’t out littering, however the quantity has since ticked again up. Every thing they pull out is shipped to a landfill. Through the years, a number of recyclers have supplied to haul off a number of the Bayou’s trash however Mr. Robinson stated they balk after they see it firsthand. “It’s blended with natural matter and water and silt and it’s probably not recyclable,” he stated.

An apparent repair can be to cease litter from reaching the bayou within the first place. Mr. Rivers and Mr. Robinson are rooting for a state bottle invoice, which might incentivize folks to return containers for cash. In accordance with knowledge compiled by the Container Recycling Institute, in seven of the ten states which have bottle payments, beverage container litter has been slashed by as a lot as 84 p.c. “When it has no worth, nobody cares, and it goes into the ocean,” Mr. Robinson stated.

Within the meantime, Buffalo Bayou has Mr. Rivers as its champion. He’s posted movies of the trash-choked Bayou on-line, and appeared in native media together with the Kelly Clarkson Present, the place he was interviewed by visitor host Jay Leno. He fills the ears of people that take boat excursions with the hows and whys of the place all the rubbish comes from.

On that current morning, Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis took transient inventory of their handiwork. Contained in the increase, the bayou’s water flowed simply, rid of many of the plastic and Styrofoam, not less than for now.

“However don’t fear,” Mr. Rivers stated, as he guided the barge upriver, seeking extra trash. “There’s extra coming.”