Just how much trash is lurking under Lake Tahoe’s surface?
Nobody knows – but it will be a lot less after a multi-month cleanup effort to clear rubbish from the lake’s bottom.
Starting May 14, teams of professional and volunteer scuba divers will circumnavigate the lake’s 72 miles of shoreline to remove trash.
With divers covering about a mile of shoreline per day and working three days per week, the cleanup effort should take about six months, according to Colin West, founder of Clean Up The Lake, the nonprofit organization spearheading the effort.
“I imagine this is the largest cleanup in Tahoe’s history. There really hasn’t been an organization before us that addresses the underwater trash problem,” West said. “It’s not just limited to one area. There’s pretty bad trash issues all around Tahoe.”
Last year, dive teams pulled 3,000 pounds of trash from just a few miles of Lake Tahoe’s shoreline and nearly 5,200 pounds of trash from Donner Lake’s eight-mile shoreline.
They limit their dives to no more than 25 feet to reduce risk, which works well for the cleanup effort because “most trash tends to be near the shore, in the granite rocks or under buoys,” said West, who dives himself.
Divers rely on volunteers on the lake’s surface to help with cleanup efforts. Volunteers on kayaks and boats haul up heavy items using weighted pulley systems. Others mark the GPS coordinates of large-scale items that need cranes to remove them.
“You find lots of pieces of boats and things that have broken off, lots of tires,” West said.
Dive teams also find items that have clearly been in the lake for decades, such as boomboxes still loaded with mixtapes. Vintage clothing. And thousands and thousands of beer cans.
The entire project is estimated to cost about $250,000. Tahoe Blue Vodka offered to match up to $100,000 raised for the cleanup effort, and local businesses and individuals rose to the challenge.
Tahoe Blue Vodka has partnered with the Tahoe Fund, a nonprofit organization focused on recreation and conservation, on multiple projects over the past decade, according to Paul Felton, Tahoe Fund board member.
Tahoe Fund CEO Amy Berry said such an extensive cleanup of the lake has never been organized before.
“Cleaning up the entire circumference of the lake is pretty transformative,” she said, adding that there is no way to know how much trash is actually in the lake. “There’s never been a coordinated effort like this to do the whole lake, which is why it’s so cool.”
Clean Up The Lake doesn’t just want to take the trash from the lake and move it to a landfill though.
The nonprofit organization is partnering with Sierra Nevada University in Incline Village and Lake Tahoe Community College in South Lake Tahoe to create internship programs for students who will organize and track the trash and compare it to ocean litter.
“We’re counting every single piece of trash we pull out of the lake and organizing it. That way we can understand is this construction-based trash, is it recreational, where is it coming from?” West said.
Then, anything recyclable will be recycled.
Source: https://www.rgj.com/
