Shopping Cart Corral creek cleanup may need a different approach after summer floods

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Dozens of volunteers will take to Shoal Creek on Saturday for the third annual "Shoal Creek Shopping Cart Corral."

The Shoal Creek Conservancy created the event in response to the Watershed Protection Department's 2022 Trash in Creeks study, which reported that over 500 shopping carts were found in Austin creeks.

Last year, more than 80 volunteers and staff from the City of Austin's Watershed Protection Department and Austin Resource Recovery spread out over eight locations along Shoal Creek and removed 47 shopping carts, 116 bags of litter, and large, bulky items, including six tires, a car engine, lawn mower, and wheelbarrow, according to a press release from the conservancy.

Maria Darr, the programs director for Shoal Creek Conservancy, said the Shopping Cart Corral is different than other volunteer cleanup events the group hosts because the conservancy is able to connect with local retailers and have them pick up the shopping carts to put them back into rotation.

"What we try to do throughout the year is partner with different retailers to try to get them to understand the importance of keeping their property on their property," Darr said. "So a success of this is that H-E-B is planning on putting the locking mechanism on the wheels of carts so that they can't leave their property, and we are continuing to work with other retailers to get them to participate in something similar."

Darr said the conservancy expects around 80-90 volunteers spread out across five different locations along Shoal Creek on Saturday, which is comparable to the number of volunteers that participated last year, but they may have to take a slightly different approach to cleaning up the creek because of flash floods that occurred in the spring and summer.

"With heavy floods, we see that we're finding debris higher in the trees," Darr explained. "In July, Shoal Creek was as high as 12 feet, and then in May, it was as high as 15 feet. So, the practice in which we're extracting the trash is a little different, but it's still more or less the same as what we do throughout the year."

Another reason Shoal Creek Conservancy targets shopping carts specifically is because they can cause bigger problems than smaller pieces of litter, Darr said.

"The real issue with shopping carts is that they are large pieces of metal, and they trap a lot of debris, be it plant matter or things like other trash. And so in an area that is prone to flooding, shopping carts create a bigger risk of exacerbating that issue, of having larger things get stuck on them, rather than being able to flow normally," Darr explained.

The Shoal Creek Conservancy hosts regular cleanups throughout the year. They will also host a membership drive on Saturday after the shopping cart corral at Central Market on North Lamar (4001 N Lamar). The meetup will be held from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

More information about volunteer opportunities and how to support Shoal Creek Conservancy can be found online.