One man’s mission: Eel River cleanup

From the Eureka Times-Standard:

“John Casali grew up in a close-knit, Italian working class neighborhood, three blocks from San Francisco’s Fishermen’s Wharf.

It was the 1950s, a much more innocent time as he remembers it, when at 13, he and his friends started spending their Saturdays and summers playing down at the wharf, fishing out of their hand-built skiff, setting traps for squid and netting rock cod along the sewer pipes. Sometimes they’d get to go out on a sport fishing boat as deckhands. John would bring home ling cod, rock fish and squid to his grandfather, who’d make a wonderful cioppino with it.

John loved life on the water, fog rolling in, the smell of fish, the bay, the squawking gulls, the camaraderie of the fishermen. So much so that at 15 he quit school to work for the large fish markets, unloading boats, icing fish, taking orders. For John, there was never any question: He’d always live near the water.

Always a hard worker, in his late 20s he started buying distressed properties, many of them on riverfront property, fixing them up and selling them for a profit a couple years later. He’s lived on the Petaluma River, the Mattole, and the Rogue River in Oregon and has lived in Southern Humboldt for the better part of the last 30 years. But it wasn’t until four years ago, when he bought a house on the scenic south fork of the Eel River, that he discovered an “inconvenient truth.” Large amounts of garbage were being left on the riverbanks and creeks. … “

Read more from the Eureka Times-Standard by clicking here.

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