Approximately 200 San Marcos volunteers came together March 2 to participate in the annual Great Texas River Cleanup.

Melanie Howard, watershed project manager for the City of San Marcos, said the number of volunteers was up by about 50 from last year.

Volunteers worked in groups at four locations, including tributaries of the San Marcos River. Among the volunteers, Howard said there were 40 canoeists that traveled as far downstream as Shady Grove.

The majority of the litter was picked up prior to the day of the cleanup by the city-hired contractor, Pristine Texas Rivers, Howard said. She said the contractor works year-round cleaning the river and is paid through the city's Habitat Conservation Plan funds.

Howard's HCP intern, Nick Lawrie, scoured the cleanup sites, mapping them before the day of the cleanup.

Eight volunteers joined Lawrie and fellow intern Ross Phillips at a tributary of the San Marcos River on gated property on the north side of I-35. The cleanup on the tributary mostly consisted of material that will be recycled, including plastic bags, plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

Lawrie said the high winds during the days preceding the cleanup contributed to more debris to pick up.

Volunteer Maria Chavez, a junior at Texas State University majoring in biology, said she had difficulty picking up plastic bags during the cleanup.

"It was so hard to get those things off the trees," Chavez said. "It was like incorporated [into the trees]."

Austin Bryan, a junior at San Marcos High School, volunteered for the cleanup through Junior Statesmen of America and said doing so gave him a new perspective on how the river is maintained. He said he already knew the river was cleaned on a regular basis.

"But then through doing this, I saw that real people had to go out and do it, and it wasn't just magically cleaned by the river fairies," Bryan said.

This is Howard's 17th year participating in the Great River Clean Up, which she said has been held for more than a quarter century.

Typically held twice a year, once in the spring and once in the summer, the March 2 cleanup will be the only one taking place this year. In place of a second river cleanup later in 2013, Howard said there will be a "community day" involving the HCP. The community day is still in the planning phase.

"We're going to put our thinking caps on and redo the community cleanup in the fall," she said.