At this time of year, when southern California finally gets some rain, our local beaches really get dumped upon, and we don’t mean the rain. According to Kim Masoner, Founder, Seal Beach based Save Our Beach, when it rains, the trash comes down the San Gabriel River and ends up at Seal Beach. “Trash from Diamond Bar and people in Azusa, their trash comes all the way down to Seal Beach.”

While people in the foothills are worrying about mud flows, Masoner is thinking about trash flows. ”We had a young lady from Alhambra that her driver’s license some how made it into the riverbed. That’s quite a ways. But it’s plastic—it floats. She just turned 21; it was a brand new license. It made quite a journey.”

Masoner operates the nonprofit organization Save our Beach from her Ocean front home in Seal Beach. “We do beach clean up anywhere from San Diego to Santa Monica during the week, and then Huntington, Seal, and Long Beach on Saturday.” This Saturday, December 19, 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, is the monthly clean up at Seal Beach.

Masoner indicated that anywhere between 200 and 1,000 people usually show up for the monthly clean ups. She said “We provide bottled water, we provide hand sanitizer, and we provide gloves.” Click here to go to the web site and get the details.

The clean up this Saturday will come none too soon for Masoner. With the heavy rains, there is plenty of work to do. “It’s there right now. I just went and looked at it on Monday and I wanted to spend the whole day cleaning up. It’s a mess.”

She said Save Our Beach just celebrated their tenth anniversary with about 1,100 people participating in a massive clean up. But, that was before the recent storms. The organization is “all volunteer”. Masoner said “I live at the beach; I donate my office which looks out onto the ocean. We have no paid employees. I’m the founder of Save Our Beach and I donate all my time. It’s more than a full time job.”

Masoner indicated the City of Seal Beach does not provide any funding for the organization, but does contribute in other ways.”They empty out the dumpsters that we fill. We use reusable bags because we don’t want to create any more trash. We fill up their dumpster and they empty that for us.”

Masoner said “From what the surfers tell me, the trash comes floating down {the San Gabriel River} and the current just takes it and throws it right back up on the beach. The majority of the trash is in the rocks on the jetty.”

It is a good idea to come out this Saturday and learn how it all works because you will want to do it again in January. That’s when Disneyland becomes part of the picture. Starting on January 1, 2010, Disneyland will give away a free ticket to people who volunteer a day at any one of many approved community organizations. Save Our Beach just recently was approved as one of the authorized nonprofits.

It almost sounds too good to be true, but OC180NEWS.com checked with Disneyland, and it is legitimate. The program does not start until after the first of the year. At that time, there will be a place to sign up on the Disneyland web site.

People who want to clean up Seal Beach and get a free ticket to Disneyland, must register on the Disneyland web site after 1/1/10 AND the volunteer work must be done after completing the registration. The basic deal is one free ticket for one day of volunteering. But, Masoner said that since the beach clean up is manual labor, it only takes 4 hours to earn a free ticket.

Tickets are limited. John McClintock, spokesperson for Disneyland Resort said “Limited in the sense that we hope to get a million volunteers over the course of the year. So, it probably is a good idea to start volunteering in January.”

People must be at least 6 years old to take part in the free ticket deal, a person can only get one ticket, and the ticket must be used by December 15, 2010. But, as long as you register in advance with an approved organization after 1/1/10 and do the work after you register, those are the only restrictions. So, the family can all volunteer to help clean up our beach and then everybody who helps gets to go to Disneyland for free.

As long as the tickets are used by 12/15/10, McClintock indicated there are not even any restrictions or blackout dates for when the tickets can be used. After Disneyland opens up the registration web site, OC180NEWS.com will provide an update.