The Interceptor deployed on Ballona Creek – credit, The Ocean Cleanup, press photo
Seeking to preen and pamper its beaches ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics, authorities in 2 Los Angeles districts needed to figure out how to get thousands of pounds of trash out of the LA and San Gabriel rivers.
They turned to the best in class; a man who among those whose passion is cleaning up water bodies, needs no introduction: Boyan Slat.
The once-child-wiz kid behind the Ocean Cleanup, the international nonprofit using the currents of the ocean to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Slat also invented a device for cleaning up rivers called the Interceptor.
It had already been deployed in Ballona Creek near Marina Del Rey, where it collects some 28,000 pounds of trash every year from Westside communities like Venice, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica.
Seal Beach City Councilmember Joe Kalmick and state assemblymember for parts of Orange County Diane Dixon, contacted the Ocean Cleanup to explore the possibilities of getting an Interceptor in the San Gabriel River.
The two formed the San Gabriel River Working Group, and began to appoint a team to draft a feasibility study for replicating the success of Ballona Creek.
The Interceptor deployed on Ballona Creek – credit, The Ocean Cleanup, press photo
Slat’s Interceptor is a rather bulbous and immobile white barge that sits in the river doing very little until it rains, when the heavens wash the garbage of a dozen zip codes down towards the ocean and the beaches.
At that point, a diver is called to connect a boom and net to the concrete side of the canalized river which collects trash amid the flow and funnels it to a central mouth. There, a conveyor belt pulls it out and dumps it into six bins in the middle of the barge.
Once full, the boat hauls the trash to the harbor where a crane and net recovers it for processing. Since the Interceptor was installed in Ballona in 2022, it has collected more than 200 tons of trash, officials said.
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Slat originally developed the Interceptor for the world’s 100 most polluting rivers—mostly located in low and middle income countries. James Patterson, head of Ocean Cleanup’s operations for Los Angeles, said that every barge is built a little differently.
Boyan Slat (middle) among LA county and city authorities at a 2026 press event – credit, The Ocean Cleanup, press photo
“One of the challenges with the LA River and San Gabriel River is the sheer volume of trash,” he said, according to the LA Times. “We need a good extraction method that can actually pull trash out in a rapid amount of time.”
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With Long Beach hosting some of the Olympic events, such as rowing and open swimming, city authorities want their famous beaches to be in the best shape they can be.
“We want to make sure we present the very best of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and that includes a cleaner, healthier, more beautiful coastline,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said regarding the decision to bring the barge, costing several millions of dollars, into San Gabriel.
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