Thirty years of cleaning up our river, more than 70,000 volunteers and 500 tons of hauled out trash, make this April event that just ended yesterday the biggest urban waters clean up in the country, according to Friends of the LA River, creator of the event.

Over the years, oddities pulled out of its water include:

— a Volkswagen Beetle                                        — a phone booth

— one entire dumpster                                      — a portable toilet

And recently, as fisher folk know, lots of carp, bass, tilapia and an occasional former aquarium dweller.

As FoLAR’s Lewis MacAdams told me once, “When the steelhead return to the river, we’ll know our job is done.” The motto on his statute in the park named after him says it all.

See you on the river, Jim Burns