Justin Scacco jscacco@sierrasun.com
As a team of divers drop below the surface of the waves near Ski Run Marina, the leader of the group points to an area he believes will have little trash.
It’s an ideal spot to work out any kinks for an ambitious plan to dive around the 72-miles of Lake Tahoe’s shoreline. However, as the team dips toward the bottom off the shore off of South Lake Tahoe, an unexpected view begins to come into focus. Instead of an area that Clean Up the Lake Founder and Executive Director Colin West expected to be light on trash, the team of divers comes upon a field of discarded bottles.
“I was like, ‘You know, I don’t think we’re going to see much trash,’” said West. “We get down there and all of a sudden we’re in a glass graveyard — glass bottles all over the place. Even with all of the experience and the hundreds of dives I’ve had cleaning up the lake in Tahoe, I was surprised. I was blown away at how much we pulled out of that area.”
Founded in 2018, Clean Up the Lake’s team of volunteer divers have dove into Lake Tahoe and Donner Lake, bringing up thousands of pounds of trash from beneath the surface. This year the nonprofit set out to pull trash from depths of up to 25 feet around the entirety of Lake Tahoe.
On Wednesday, Clean Up the Lake celebrated its first milestone on its way to cleaning 72 miles of shoreline, announcing that 8,122 pounds of trash have been removed along 22 miles of Tahoe’s eastern shore…
READ MORE from: https://www.sierrasun.com/news/making-a-difference-8k-pounds-of-trash-removed-from-tahoe/.
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