Del Rio Hosts Earth Day Festival With Cleanup, Music, and Free Pollinator Seeds

The city of Del Rio will transform Lt. Thomas Romanelli Memorial Park into an Earth Day hub Saturday morning, giving residents a chance to pull litter from San Felipe Creek, collect free pollinator seeds, and catch live music, all before noon.

The day runs in two phases. Volunteers meeting at the Dr. Alfredo Gutierrez Jr. Amphitheater at 105 W. De La Rosa St. will start with a creek and park cleanup from 8 to 9 a.m., with litter bags and gloves available on site. Cleanup targets Romanelli Park, the adjacent Skate Garden, and stretches of San Felipe Creek. All collected litter data will be logged into the Texas Litter Database as part of Del Rio's Keep Texas Beautiful partnership, a submission process that helps quantify volunteer impact and strengthens the city's case for future environmental grants.

From 9 a.m. to noon, the park transitions into a full family festival. Big Air Trampoline & Adventure Park is providing inflatable games, Sharky's will be selling snow cones, and an art station will feature rock and canvas painting with Earth Day themes. City staff will run a dedicated planting area, distributing free pots and pollinator seeds to anyone who wants to start or expand a home garden.

Community Services Director Esme Esparza Meza said the city chose a Saturday slot deliberately to pull in more participants ahead of the official April 22 Earth Day date. She described the programming as educational, with an emphasis on concrete, take-home actions that give individuals a direct way to reduce their carbon footprint rather than just attend a ceremony.

Communications and Marketing Director Peter Ojeda pointed to the seed giveaway as something more than a gesture. Putting plants in people's hands and seeds in children's hands, he said, builds lasting stewardship habits and environmental literacy that persist well beyond a single Saturday morning.

Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages is partnering with the city on logistics, and Texas Leadership Del Rio is supplying the yellow trash bags used during the cleanup. The event opens Del Rio's broader sustainability month programming for April, with the Texas Litter Database submission creating a documented record of community effort that city leaders can build on in the months ahead.