{"id":875015,"date":"2026-06-18T03:55:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/875015\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T03:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:55:17","slug":"vapes-among-2500-pounds-of-trash-pulled-from-salt-river-raising-safety-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/875015\/","title":{"rendered":"Vapes among 2,500 pounds of trash pulled from Salt River, raising safety concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\"><b>PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 Cleanup crews pulled thousands of pounds of trash from the Salt River following a busy weekend, including an item that has environmental officials concerned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Volunteers and state workers recovered 2,500 pounds of trash during the recent cleanup. Among the debris: 39 phones, three umbrellas, one hamster cage and 22 pounds of vapes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">The vapes are drawing health concerns from state officials.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">\u201cI was seeing all of this trash after a fun three-day weekend, my heart was so sad because it is, it\u2019s really upsetting that people treat the environment that way,\u201d said Meghan Smart from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Smart said the batteries and vapes can leak chemicals into the water that eventually flows to Valley cities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThere\u2019s chemicals. You\u2019re introducing that into our waterway, which a wastewater treatment plant has to clean out, a drinking water supply system has to clean out,\u201d she explained. \u201cReally, we need to protect our streams and our lakes because they\u2019re our water sources.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Crews recovered 39 phones, three umbrellas, one hamster cage and 22 pounds of vapes during a...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/A74FZINNMZATPOCNQ6PGUNE7UQ.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>Crews recovered 39 phones, three umbrellas, one hamster cage and 22 pounds of vapes during a recent cleanup at the Salt River.(Arizona Department of Environmental Quality)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Smart said she had never seen that many vapes recovered from the water before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Crews also found typical items like sunglasses, phones and unfinished drinks during the cleanup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">With a holiday weekend approaching, state officials are urging people to throw trash into trash cans at the river or pack out what they pack in. Officials also encourage people to collect trash if they see it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 Cleanup crews pulled thousands of pounds of trash from the Salt River following a busy&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":875016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,355658,1587,7182,355657,50,1589,7183,266396,355655,355659,27029,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,24819,355656],"class_list":["post-875015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-river","tag-az","tag-azfamily","tag-items-found-salt-river","tag-news","tag-phoenix","tag-phoenix-news","tag-salt-river","tag-salt-river-cleanup","tag-salt-river-trash","tag-trash","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vapes","tag-what-did-crews-find-in-salt-river"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}