Larry Johmann made contact with Stanley Robert from KRON-4 News, People Behaving Badly, and discussed with him about the squatters in downtown San Jose while the King Salmon are spawning and how serious the problem is. You’ll see a lot of things that belonged to homeless in the creeks. This third storm we had washed away many homeless encampments and carried their things down stream wrapping them around trees and bridges. These pictures were taken at E Brokaw Rd and Ridder Park Dr. I brought Stanley Roberts downtown to areas of the Guadalupe, Los Gatos Creek and Coyote Creeks to do a follow-up segment on the significantly increasing occurrences of squatters, pollution and poaching problems they are causing. He aired a report on the news last night. He did a great job but don’t watch it when you are eating!
Larry and myself are finishing up about 8 miles of GPS mapping on locations of Homeless communities in our streams and rivers. We’ve captured hundreds of photos about these large homeless encampments and the bad things happening in our streams and close by communities. The list of problems keeps growing, Ten wildfires put out this year, steeling of copper wire from homes, business, city and utilities, tunneling into banks of the stream to construct homes, one with a staircase to the second floor, and the unsanitary conditions and waste covering the creek banks.
Noting that these photos were taken after the recent cleanup they show the amount of garbage still remaining in the river and now flowing out to the San Francisco Bay and estuaries. I will be submitting this to officer Bryon Jones when completed on behalf of Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Group. To see additional info from last year about homeless affecting spawning areas and the stream log visit us at www.silichip.org
Don Bernard