Burning Man has become known for wild outfits, utopian philosophy, rich techies and celebrity attendees and, increasingly, frustrated locals in nearby towns.
Nearly 80,000 people pour into Nevada’s Black Rock Desert each year for the countercultural festival with community principles that include leaving no trace in the environment and protecting social networks and public spaces.
The sudden surge in visitors to the desert has been a boon for tourism in towns in Nevada and California, but it has also come at a cost. For years, residents of cities such as Reno have complained about the dust-covered trash left behind by Burners and traffic. A local sheriff has said: “Burning Man brings nothing to Pershing county except for heartache.”
Now the latest complaint is coming from Lake Tahoe. While the lake region is more than two hours from the desert, visitors to the remote region of the American west often pass through the popular tourist destinations of Reno and Lake Tahoe. This week business owners and officials in the Lake Tahoe town of Truckee told SFGate festivalgoers had illegally dumped their trash in the area.
“What I’ve seen are large construction bags of trash, alcohol bottles, tons of food, tents and large aluminum poles from shade structures,” a local carwash owner told a photographer with the outlet. “People just unload their motor homes. I’ve seen people sometimes spend four to six hours pulling everything out of their vehicles, then wash their cars and their belongings. One camper can fill up half of my capacity.”
A city council member told the outlet that after the festival “campers often fill the dumpsters with everything from tents, shade structures and other trash that isn’t your normal camping trash”.
Truckee has introduced some parking restrictions in part due to trash, noise and camping on docks associated with festival attendees, the outlet reported. The festival expects visitors to clean up after themselves, but that has posed challenges. In 2018, the US Bureau of Land Management told organizers that they had left too much trash after that year’s event. Business owners from Utah to California have complained about waste left by festival attendees.
“Some people, even when they leave here, they just throw it off the road. They don’t want to pay, so they just throw [it] off the road,” Athena Lamebull, who runs a disposal site in northern Nevada, told KUNR in 2019.
The festival has urged guests to properly dispose of their trash and not leave it behind on highways. “Not only is litter irresponsible and costly in terms of energy, time, and money for others, it is also illegal and reflects very badly on Burning Man,” organizers said on Twitter.
Most people who attend Burning Man abide by the rules, SFGate points out, and towns such as Truckee have said they are grateful for the increase in visitors and support for local businesses.
This year marked the first official Burning Man festival since 2019 after organizers cancelled the event two years in a row due to Covid. Last summer, an event in the desert dubbed a “renegade” Burning Man drew more than 15,000 people and criticism from local law enforcement officials. Attendees this year endured a huge dust storm during the festival and a more than nine-hour wait time as they left.
