A small army of volunteers has descended on the L.A. River this morning between Atwater Village and Elysian Valley as part of the 25th Annual Great L.A. River Clean Up. Photographer Mike Daclan is down in the river on this hot and sunny Saturday to cover the event and will be sending more photos later. Hope they had enough bags and gloves.

* Update @ 5:50 p.m.: At least 1,000 volunteers showed up for today’s clean up, the second of three planned events said Josh Kamensky. The amount of trash picked up today won’t be known for a few weeks but, according to Kamensky, the staff of the Friends of the L.A. River, which organized the clean up, “observed that the number of plastic bags is much lower than in previous years, as we would expect from the bag ban.” Next weekend’s third and final clean up will be held in Compton and Long Beach.

The clean up comes as the section of the L.A. River in Elysian Valley will open in a few weeks to the public for kayaking, fishing and hiking.

While we don’t know how much trash was picked up today, we do have more photos from Mike Daclan of the variety of rubbish – from clothes to electronics – that was removed from the river bed. Said Daclan:

It was definitely hot and unfortunately the river didn’t do much to cool it down. This didn’t slow down the volunteers and everyone remained in high spirits. Volunteers were willing to get right into the thick of the brush and get their hands dirty. Luckily the coordinators provided everyone with thick gloves and pinchers to grab debris.”

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