UPDATE: Creek Clean Up By the Numbers—44 Volunteers, 6 Brownies!

The preliminary numbers are in. Our creeks are 29,370 pounds of trash lighter now.

Three-hundred pounds of trash came from a section of Permanente Creek, where cleanup was coordinated by GreenTown Los Altos.

And one really long, rusted piece of metal. Brought in by six Girl Scout Brownies from Almond Elementary School.

Troop #61015, led by Sara Elkin, showed some real ingenuity when they saw the verrrrry long piece of rusted metal in the creekbed. There were six of them and they spaced out very nicely along the length of the pipe, as you can see.

What else was found?

"We found a credit card from 2006, some drug paraphernalia and an antique cover from a water system," said Barbara O'Reilly, the coordinator for the group. The cover said "Water" and "Emeryville," which means it traveled.

Coastal Cleanup Day last weekend meant volunteers spread out all over the Bay Area to clean not just beaches but the creeks that feed into the beaches and bay.

Here are the preliminary numbers, countywide, compiled by the Creek Connections Action Group:

• 1,629 volunteers
• 76.58 miles of creeks and shorelines
• 29,370 pounds of trash collected
• 4,673 pounds of recyclables

Barbara O'Reilly, coordinator of the day's effort for GreenTown Los Altos, reported that the section of Permanente Creek that the organization adopted had these stats:

• 44 volunteers (20 were asked for)
• 300 pounds of trash collected
• 15 pounds of recyclables collected

O'Reilly said a Brownie Girl Scout Troop 61015 from Almond School and a Boy Scout Troop of sixth-graders participated. The tiny band of Brownies dragged out an enormous piece of rusted pipe that had been lying in the creek bed, said troop leader Sara Elker.

Friends of Adobe Creek also adopted a section of that waterway. Signups filled up quickly there, because it involved kayaking a section that people are not usually allowed to enter—East Bayshore Road to the Palo Alto Baylands.

 The cleanacreek.org website will be updated at the end of the week.

Now, here's your turn.

If you volunteered to clean up a creek or went out to the beach, we'd love to see you post your pictures here. There's still a few old ones up from last May's creek cleanup, just to give you a sense of what gets done, but we'd love to see more, like the Brownies' pictures.