The twice-annual Molalla RiverWatch cleanup has been a tradition around Molalla for the past 16 years.

This year, volunteers fanned out to span the riverbanks from the Highway 211 bridge in Meadowbrook to the edge of the Table Rock wilderness in the Molalla River Recreation corridor.

While one group of Molalla RiverWatch volunteers and BLM staff trudged along the river banks on Saturday, a few Sierra Club volunteers hiked three miles up the Old Bridge Trail at the mouth of the Table Rock wilderness area to begin a trail restoration project.

The cleanup was a large undertaking, as always, but not as overwhelming as in past years, as Molalla RiverWatch director Kay Patteson can attest.

Patteson, who has been with the organization since 1992, recalls one year when the cleanup hauled in 91 abandoned car tires. Another year, a 30-yard drop box came back filled entirely with scrap metal.

This year, however, yielded only one car tire along with the usual assortment of campsite trash — picnic supplies, batteries, bottles and cans — and remnants of riverside parties.

“The first year we did the cleanup, it was a major effort with the National Guard getting involved,” Patteson said. “ … It has improved since then, partly because we’ve gotten out a lot of the old dumping sites.”

A number of groups have worked in partnership to bring about that development.

The river cleanups, coordinated by Molalla RiverWatch and the Bureau of Land Management, with sponsorship from the Clackamas County, the SOLV program and Molalla Communications Co., are one piece of the effort

Another piece is the Clackamas County Dump Stoppers program, which was set up five years ago through grants from the federal BLM and United States Forest Service, in conjunction with the county.

In those five years, with the aid of a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the program full time, there have been 45 convictions for illegal dumping in Clackamas County and about a dozen in the Molalla area alone.

The minimum fine is $400 and the maximum $4,300. In some cases, illegal dumpers have received jail sentences.

Before the program began, Clackamas County natural resource coordinator Tom Ortman said, many county roads were shut down due to dumping issues. Household goods, debris from home remodels, and old cars frequently found their way to the bottom of cliffs and river banks in the remote and forested areas of the county.

“People were taking household garbage and vehicles — sometimes stolen, sometimes not — and for recreation were going and dumping them over a cliff or shooting them up,” Ortman said.

Aside from the enforcement efforts, the Dump Stopper program conducts public education and brings community service work crews to participate along with volunteers and BLM staff in the Molalla RiverWatch cleanups.

Ortman said he believes the Dump Stopper program has brought noticeable results.