Opinion: Trash a problem on July 4

Trash in South Lake Tahoe left by July 4 partiers. Photo/Provided

By Catherine Cecchi

Despite a great outreach push from land managers and local jurisdictions, environmental groups, and area businesses for Tahoe residents and visitors to clean up after themselves as they celebrated the Fourth of July, the evidence from Sunday morning indicated that we continue to have a significant problem with littering as people celebrate the holiday in South Tahoe.

Clean Tahoe, a South Tahoe nonprofit focused on litter abatement, removed more than 400 pounds of trash from the public roadway and sidewalks near the Stateline area on the morning of July 5. The largest problem area was along Stateline Avenue and Lakeshore Boulevard, where nine 30-gallon bags of litter were collected.

While Clean Tahoe staff did not take an inventory of what was collected, the overwhelming majority was bottles and cans, cups, cigarette butts, and food wrappers/packaging.

Clean Tahoe contracts with the city of South Lake Tahoe and El Dorado County to clean litter and illegally dumped items along our roadways and in neighborhoods on a year-round basis. Last year, more than 608-cubic-yards of trash and debris was removed from South Tahoe by the two-person field crew.

Because of the large concentration of visitors, Clean Tahoe focuses efforts on July 5 on the city streets near Stateline.

“This year the Stateline area wasn’t quite as bad as last year, but it is still pretty disappointing to see that much litter left out in our community after one night,” said Jeff Pollitt, Clean Tahoe field crew supervisor.

Clean Tahoe’s work was only one of many cleanups around the lake this year, with dozens of organizations, businesses, and land managers leading the efforts.

It’s been wonderful to see the attention being given to cleaning up after the 4th of July celebrations, and the volunteer participation for the beach cleanups in particular is really exciting. We’re hopeful that with continued outreach and awareness, we’ll have fewer litter issues each year.

Catherine Cecchi is program manager for Clean Tahoe.