Video: Cleaning Up Pacifica's Secret Waterfall

There once was a series of streams that ran freely East to West through the area where Daly City is now. They would, as streams do, eventually find their way to the Pacifica Ocean at various outlets in what is now Northwest Pacifica along the Esplanade Bluffs.

When Daly City came to be and all of the ticky-tacky houses were built from the Bay to the ocean, however, those streams were merged and undergrounded. The water now empties out of a colvert high atop an Esplanade Bluff face in Pacifica and when rains are hard can jet as far as 50 to 100 ft. toward the Pacific. 

As the water travels underground through Daly City and Pacifica, it picks up garbage from storm drains only to dump it at the base of this waterfall and in the 100-or-so-yard long stream leading from it to the ocean. Styrofoam mottles the beach at the stream's mouth, a plastic inflatable chair is partly buried and still inflated in a dune, and cigarette buts and tires bake in the sun. 

Pacifica's Ian Butler has dedicated days over several years to cleaning this site, which is only reachable by scampering down some makeshift trails with the aid of a rope. His work seems to be paying off. 

Butler said when he first arrived with burlap sack in hand, the amount of trash piled around the potentially-pristine area was overwhelming. Now, although garbage is still trapped in pools along the stream and wedged among rocks, it's not so bad. 

"Pacifica's Secret Waterfall", as Butler calls it, is also host to some increasingly rare San Mateo Coast flora, such as the beach primrose shown in the video in the gallery to the right. 

And, as if the garbage wasn't enough of a reminder of the sometimes precarious relationship between humankind, its development, and nature, massive landslides near the road above have drastically changed the topography of the place within the last month. 

Many feet of sediment from the bluff face that came crashing down (luckily, Butler wasn't there when it happened) have raised the floor of the creek canyon by several feet and massive bolders stand on their end where there once was just stream-smoothed rocks. Chunks of reddish bricks cemented together rear from the sand--evidence of a sidewalk or road that must have crumbled into the waterfall's bowl many, many decades ago. 

Watch the video in the gallery to the right for more.