Volunteers pick up thousands of pounds of post holiday trash along Lake Tahoe beaches
Submitted by editor on Wed, 07/06/2016 - 12:38pm
Hundreds of volunteers hit Lake Tahoe shorelines Tuesday to clean up after the tens of thousands of July 4 weekend holiday revelers who flocked to area beaches.
The League to Save Lake Tahoe coordinated the trash pick up efforts at nine area beaches. Their volunteers gathered nearly 1,600 pounds of trash which included 7,738 cigarette butts. Single-use plastics were the second-most commonly found category of trash, following cigarette butts.
South Shore Lake Tahoe business owner, Kenny Curtzwiler of K & K Services spent his 19th July 5th in a row cleaning up the South Lake Tahoe areas of Regan and El Dorado beaches.
"Actually, it seemed like just a little less garbage than in past years," Curtzwiler said when asked if he and his group of employees saw more or less garbage. "The best thing is that most of the trash was around the cans."
There aren't enough trash cans for people to put their trash in, and many don't take the initiative to take the trash home, or to another dumpster.
Curtzwiler and team collected about 4,500 pounds of trash.
Many educational efforts have tried to reach the public to help educate them about not trashing beautiful Lake Tahoe.
There are still teams of volunteers combing beaches all week in search of trash, especially those from fireworks that may have been missed.
Follow the original story here at South Tahoe Now.
