On a riverbed cleanup in December, 2007, a group of Baler volunteers found an abandoned vehicle in the stream channel near Hwy 156. We tried hard to uncover it that day, but it was too big of a job. However, we didn't forget it was there, rusting and leaking away into our drinking water.

We went back in November, 2009, armed with shovels and buckets and dug it out completely. Backed by the support of county officials, we thought it was going to be towed away the next county work day. As it turned out, things were not that simple. There were some additional environmental regulations which we didn't know about. We soon learned that there was no permitting process in place to allow the vehicle to be hauled away.

We waited for almost two more years for a permit process to be hashed out among various county and state agencies. Finally, this past Saturday, with the help of our heroes at the San Benito County Sheriff's Office, the San Benito Natural Resource Conservation District, the San Benito County Division of Integrated Waste Management, the California Department of Fish and Game, Graniterock, Inc., he Hollister Waste Water Treatment Plant, RJR Recycling, and Quality Towing, we succeeded in our nearly four-year quest of removing that hunk of junk from the watershed!