KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
For three years, volunteers with Beautification of Bouquet Canyon Falls have been cleaning up trash and graffiti at Bouquet Falls. Now they have a GoFundMe.
If you take a trip up to Bouquet Falls on a Saturday morning, you might hear the rush of the falls, the babbling of the creek, and the chugging of a gas generator along with the spray of the pressure washer attached to it. That’s the work of the volunteer clean-up crew organized by the Facebook group Beautification of Bouquet Canyon Falls.
An abundance of trash and graffiti have been a problem at Bouquet Falls for years. In 2017, local residents Joe Lopez and Dan Chapman decided to do something about it.
“We saw some posts about three years ago on the Santa Clarita Community page saying that it was a shame what happened to the falls with all the paint and the trash, so Joe and I put together a new page called the Beautification of Bouquet Falls,” Chapman said. “We got about a hundred folks interested right away, and the first weekend we came out there were about half a dozen folks with us picking up trash.”
The Facebook group has over 450 members today with Lopez and Chapman as the administrators organizing cleanups. Sometimes a group turns up; sometimes it’s just Lopez and Chapman. They bring a generator and pressure washer and together they scrub and spray graffiti off the rocks and pick up trash around the creek.
“We just wanted to do what we could to change things,” Lopez said. “The falls you see right in front of us were completely covered with graffiti. And it took us most of that season, of 2017, to get rid of it. Since then, it’s been just a matter of managing the amount of graffiti, the new stuff.”
The close proximity and natural beauty of the falls have made them a popular attraction for hikers and families. But the easy access, just a few steps from the road, also attracts vandals and inconsiderate visitors who leave trash behind.
Lopez and Chapman have made a lot of progress around one section close to the road, but they have had trouble getting their equipment further down the creek.
“This top part we can reach with the gas generator and pressure washer that Joe has. This top part is pretty clean,” Chapman said. “When you go down below where we can’t reach, there’s years of graffiti down there. We want to be able to get down there. In order to do that we need the resources to get gas-powered stuff so we’re not limited, distance-wise, by where the truck can reach.”
Downstream from the area they focus on, graffiti dominates the landscape. The potentially captivating view of huge boulders surrounding a charming little creek, is somewhat ruined by bright letters, some six feet high, spelling out crude or indecipherable words. No tree or rock seems spared from the spray paint covering everything in sight.
While the Beautification of Bouquet Falls group has been hard at work to clean what they can, much of the creek is out of their reach.
In July, the group started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to buy better equipment. As of Friday afternoon, the group had raised $1,100 of their $6,000 goal. They recently bought a gas-powered pressure washer with the money they’ve raised so far.
More portable equipment will make it possible for Lopez and Chapman to expand their cleanup effort beyond what is close to the road. With a gas-powered pressure washer and battery-powered equipment, the group can get further downstream than their extension cords can reach.
Chapman and Lopez say they enjoy spending part of their weekends cleaning up the falls for the physicality of it and the fresh air, but the real reward is providing a clean and beautiful place for families to spend time together in nature.
“We come here and we see families bring their children and put their chairs in the water and enjoy it all day long,” Lopez said. “They even come here because other places are tagged. They come here to enjoy the natural scenery of the falls. So that’s why we’re doing it.”
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Great! Thanks for cleaning up the filthy graffiti & trash! Those “tags” are Hispanic tags most often! Did any of those criminals get caught for their horrible crimes against natural areas moving in defacing innocent natural areas?! The low class creatures are coming here from the SFV , Palmdale, Lanc./Bakersfield, etc. to degenerate our once beautiful, peaceful areas—when will it stop?!?! Decent citizens unite & stop excusing reality!! Thanks!
Who cares if the tags are Hispanic? Stop pointing fingers. If you want to talk about destroying nature, the colonizers destroyed much of the land we live on…so maybe blame your ancestors instead of people who you don’t know.
Blaming ancestors is like blaming my Asian neighbor for Pearl Harbor. Stop with the nonsense of blaming ones ancestors. Move forward. Stop trying to gaslight people into thinking they need to repent for their ancestors sins. This is bonkers.
I have to agree with JoJo for once! He’s right! And I’m thankful for these guys for caring and taking it upon themselves to clean the place up! Need more of these people around! All us locals should contribute to the GoFundMe page with what we can! Places like this sometimes go unnoticed and fall under the radar, but they stepped it up nicely! I’m going to give some money myself! It’s a great cause!
Thank you Arn. Yes, in order to stay ahead of these taggers we need better and more efficient equipment. We need help from the community to make this happen. We can volunteer our time, but we need the community to help us purchase this equipment so we can restore the falls to their natural beauty.
Tagging to outr local rocks by Obama’s DACA recipients or perhaps by his anchor babies. Thanks Democrats. Here is the link to your boy Biden, plagiarize.
Liked “https://youtu.be/_f2Z30j61aw”
colonizer please, this isn’t even your land.
Grafitti is only a part of the problem. I visited the creek yesterday where Ive fished and picnicked since the 1960’s, and was amazed at all of the trash and clothing left all over the area. It would be nice if the area could be patrolled or if at least some anti-littering signs were posted. Maybe some nice stiff fines and cleanup detail handed down to anyone assaulting this beautiful area.
As a child and preteen, this was our favorite place to camp. Almost the entire giant Italian family would camp here nearly every year. I have such fond memories of this place. There used to be a Falls Cafe located near the creek and us older kids would sometimes sneak over there to buy candy. The adults wouldn’t let us go there on our own. I am posting your site on my family facebook page, hoping some will donate to the cause. Thanks for all the work you are doing.
I visited there today and the area looks much cleaner! Even the area with the two gazebo’s that was destroyed was cleaned up and restored for the most part. Hopefully, one day the entire area will be restored and fishable again.