From SF Gate newsletter: Picking up trash the morning of July 5 is becoming as big of a tradition in Lake Tahoe as the fireworks on the Fourth of July.
On Sunday, 446 volunteers — locals and visitors alike — showed up to six major beaches surrounding Lake Tahoe to pick up trash the morning after the Fourth of July festivities, equipped with reusable bags and grabbers, the nonprofit Keep Tahoe Blue said. They scoured the sand and the water’s edge for litter and worked their way up into the parking lots, trails, roads and neighborhoods.
(From Mother Lode Trails: Everyone should pick up their own trash and not depend on volunteers to do it for them. It's unacceptable that the pristine beaches of Lake Tahoe are inundated with disrespectful July 4th party goers. It's time for citations. Thank you to Keep Tahoe Blue!)
By noon, the volunteers had removed an estimated 1,300 pounds of litter from Tahoe’s environment and communities, according to tallies kept by Keep Tahoe Blue. That’s slightly less litter than average for the nonprofit’s annual post-Fourth cleanup.
Last year, Keep Tahoe Blue said 650 volunteers showed up to gather 1,375 pounds of trash. While more than a half ton of beach trash isn’t nothing, the trajectory is an overall positive one. In 2023, the nonprofit reported 8,558 pounds of litter collected. That year, volunteers compared the normally beautiful beach at Zephyr Shoals to a “landfill,” full of beer cans, inflatable rafts and abandoned sandals.
This was the 13th annual Keep Tahoe Red, White & Blue Cleanup, a partnership with more than a dozen local organizations and businesses. Every year, volunteers carry clipboards to track the types of litter they find. That information goes into a database that Keep Tahoe Blue uses to identify trends and push for solutions to tamp down on littering, like banning single-use plastic water bottles and polystyrene foam in South Lake Tahoe and sending out a beach-cleaning robot that digs deeper in the sand and collects litter that’s been long forgotten.
“We’re incredibly grateful that so many people are doing their part to protect Lake Tahoe,” Marilee Movius, Keep Tahoe Blue’s sustainable recreation manager, said in a statement. “When we leave the beach better than we found it, we keep this place swimmable, hikeable, and enjoyable for future generations.”
Lisa, a volunteer from Sparks, Nevada, who grew up in Incline Village, was walking down the beach when she passed a young couple. The couple stopped and asked her what she was doing and she told them she was cleaning up the beach with Keep Tahoe Blue. “They both nodded and looked at each other, and I could see them realize, ‘we should be doing that too,’” Lisa said, according to the Keep Tahoe Blue news release.
On Saturday afternoon, Placer County sheriff’s deputies shut down multiple beaches at Lake Forest, a neighborhood near Tahoe City on the north shore, citing “large groups of teens, many from outside the area.” The sheriff’s deputies reported underage drinking, widespread littering and significant traffic impacts in surrounding neighborhoods.
Crowds overflowed to other beaches, too. At Meeks Bay Resort, on Tahoe’s west shore, large groups of beachgoers clad in stars and stripes and red, white and blue bathing suits walked down the middle of the highway, holding up traffic.
By Sunday morning, things had returned to normal in Tahoe. As volunteers cleaned up from the partygoers the night before, the beaches reopened at Lake Forest and a stream of traffic exited the Tahoe Basin.
To see the original article and photos in SF Gate CLICK HERE.
On Sunday, 446 volunteers — locals and visitors alike — showed up to six major beaches surrounding Lake Tahoe to pick up trash the morning after the Fourth of July festivities, equipped with reusable bags and grabbers, the nonprofit Keep Tahoe Blue said. They scoured the sand and the water’s edge for litter and worked their way up into the parking lots, trails, roads and neighborhoods.
(From Mother Lode Trails: Everyone should pick up their own trash and not depend on volunteers to do it for them. It's unacceptable that the pristine beaches of Lake Tahoe are inundated with disrespectful July 4th party goers. It's time for citations. Thank you to Keep Tahoe Blue!)
By noon, the volunteers had removed an estimated 1,300 pounds of litter from Tahoe’s environment and communities, according to tallies kept by Keep Tahoe Blue. That’s slightly less litter than average for the nonprofit’s annual post-Fourth cleanup.
Last year, Keep Tahoe Blue said 650 volunteers showed up to gather 1,375 pounds of trash. While more than a half ton of beach trash isn’t nothing, the trajectory is an overall positive one. In 2023, the nonprofit reported 8,558 pounds of litter collected. That year, volunteers compared the normally beautiful beach at Zephyr Shoals to a “landfill,” full of beer cans, inflatable rafts and abandoned sandals.
This was the 13th annual Keep Tahoe Red, White & Blue Cleanup, a partnership with more than a dozen local organizations and businesses. Every year, volunteers carry clipboards to track the types of litter they find. That information goes into a database that Keep Tahoe Blue uses to identify trends and push for solutions to tamp down on littering, like banning single-use plastic water bottles and polystyrene foam in South Lake Tahoe and sending out a beach-cleaning robot that digs deeper in the sand and collects litter that’s been long forgotten.
“We’re incredibly grateful that so many people are doing their part to protect Lake Tahoe,” Marilee Movius, Keep Tahoe Blue’s sustainable recreation manager, said in a statement. “When we leave the beach better than we found it, we keep this place swimmable, hikeable, and enjoyable for future generations.”
Lisa, a volunteer from Sparks, Nevada, who grew up in Incline Village, was walking down the beach when she passed a young couple. The couple stopped and asked her what she was doing and she told them she was cleaning up the beach with Keep Tahoe Blue. “They both nodded and looked at each other, and I could see them realize, ‘we should be doing that too,’” Lisa said, according to the Keep Tahoe Blue news release.
On Saturday afternoon, Placer County sheriff’s deputies shut down multiple beaches at Lake Forest, a neighborhood near Tahoe City on the north shore, citing “large groups of teens, many from outside the area.” The sheriff’s deputies reported underage drinking, widespread littering and significant traffic impacts in surrounding neighborhoods.
Crowds overflowed to other beaches, too. At Meeks Bay Resort, on Tahoe’s west shore, large groups of beachgoers clad in stars and stripes and red, white and blue bathing suits walked down the middle of the highway, holding up traffic.
By Sunday morning, things had returned to normal in Tahoe. As volunteers cleaned up from the partygoers the night before, the beaches reopened at Lake Forest and a stream of traffic exited the Tahoe Basin.
To see the original article and photos in SF Gate CLICK HERE.
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