‘One hell of a mess’: volunteers clean up three tons of trash from Lake Tahoe

Volunteers clean up around Lake Tahoe after Fourth of July: ‘We as single individuals do have an impact.’ Photograph: Courtesy Clean Up the Lake

A team of volunteers that included scuba divers, kayakers and snorkelers has collected more than three tons of trash from Lake Tahoe left behind by Fourth of July revelers.

Colin West, founder and CEO of Clean up the Lake, the group behind the cleanup effort, said the mess was “one of the worst” he’d seen in his years of trash collecting.

Debris cleared up on Wednesday included party staples like plastic food containers, beer cans, coolers and tents, as well as more illicit items like cocaine and several cans of whippits, West said.

Trash around Lake Tahoe after Fourth of July. ‘People had some raging big party and had just left [their trash] and it was all intentional,’ Colin West says. Photograph: Courtesy Clean Up the Lake

In its five years of existence, the group has harvested over 60,000lb – about 30 tons – of litter left in and around the famous resort lake.

During previous cleanup years, such as a 72-mile cleanup in 2022 around the circumference of the lake, which sits in both northern California and Nevada, about half of the trash found was “unintentional” meaning that it was items like sunglasses, cellphones and shoes that people likely lost rather than tossed. This year though, much of the trash was more obvious waste, like drink containers, tarps and folding chairs.

“It was different to see that people had some raging big party and had just left [their trash] and it was all intentional,” West told the Guardian.

West said that the resulting deluge of garbage on the shore and in Zephyr cove, which sits in the Nevada portion of Lake Tahoe, is an example of how individual people can contribute to “one hell of a mess”.

“We as single individuals do have an impact. Even people partying on the Fourth of July … I hope individuals see this and second guess their behaviors and have some self-reflection and better behaviors moving forward,” he said.

‘I hope individuals see this and second guess their behaviors and have some self-reflection and better behaviors moving forward.’ Photograph: Courtesy Clean Up the Lake

West, his team and the League to Save Lake Tahoe, who they partnered with on the cleanup, will sort and catalog each piece of trash they found for educational purposes. They hope to keep as much of the debris as possible out of landfills by recycling and using some of the trash to create “litter art structures” in South and North Lake Tahoe. But some will inevitably end up in the custody of the department of waste management.

He says they are all hoping to come up with actions like handing out garbage bags during the day, to prevent trash from ending up in lakes and on the shore next year.

“We want to figure out strategies to stop this from happening,” he said.