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.
Why aren’t more trash receptacles set out along the busiest walkways and on the busy beaches during these holiday times? It would only make sense. How many years of this do we need before we accept the fact that the people who come to town will not pick up their own garbage?
More trash receptacles may be the answer. The city who stands to gain from the visitors should provide additional temporary trash receptacles and port-a-potties during the heavy weekends aroundFourth of July and Labor Day weekends.
I don’t see malice on the part of visitors. After all they come to Tahoe because of the natural beauty. Make it more convenient, you will see better results.
Thank you and to Keep Tahoe Blue volunteers who make such a difference.
Please more temporary trash receptacles, city!
Yeah, more trash cans – that should do it. And maybe painted arrows directing our beloved visitors to the trash cans. And why not a concierge service offering rides to and from the trash cans or, better, bringing the trash cans to the travelers, overwhelmed by their visit to the wilds?
More trash dumpsters are provided by STR upon request by the goverening agency or HOA.
Some folks dont care and just leave their trash all over the place. Been that way forever.
Clean it up! OLS
Interesting picture when you blow it up. At least the tourists put their trash NEAR the overflowing receptacle.
How can you complain about the trash if there’s nowhere to put it?
If there aren’t enough permanent receptacles then add them where needed and empty them as needed.
During special events like the 4th, using temporary receptacles on the beaches makes perfect sense. Fifty-five gallon drums can’t be that huge of an investment.
If the goal is to cram as many people into Tahoe as possible, as often as possible, then it might be time to consider a more comprehensive garbage collection program than we currently have.
How about less people. YES, we need investment in out communities but not at the expense of ruining them every big holiday. Where are the details of just how much trash is collected? Who pays for the extra collections? Who does the clean-up? The locals are expected suck-it-up and just be happy we have $$$$ coming in. There needs to be a better balance of tourist influx and local economy. Maybe less is better
Whip has it right. Perhaps on towns busiest weekends and room rates at the slum hotels are over $200 per night, we add a clean up additional TOT tax and pay to have professionals manage the issue. To rely on volunteers and nonprofits to clean up after these weekends is completely unfair. Just because the community cares more than the local government doesn’t mean reliance should fall on the backs of those who serve the outatowners.
Also, and non related, but why are we paying for street sweeping during a flash flood watch? Wait until the storm passes before we abate the issue. Typical Tahoe.
Maybe the city can do a little math and figure out how many man hours are spent cleaning up after our coveted guests. Then assign minimum wage amounts to these hours and then you will know an approximate value. Take that amount out of the budget and rent more trash cans/portable toilets to accomodate our coveted guests. I picked up garbage for 20 years from 4th of july revelers and im totally over it. I pick up garbage every time I go to the beach. Maybe a trash tax to all tourists who drive in is in order. Ya, I know there are a few frothing at the mouth. Its just an idea…
A part of the TOT tax should pay for the extra garbage cans and toilets for every special event. Asking or expecting the locals to volunteer to do this is not right.
99% of the visitors will do the right thing, just like we do when we are are the visitor at other tourists destinations. . We all will put garbage in the trash if they are available.
Les Wright, There is a large number of extra
“overflow” dumpsters placed at the beaches for the big holidays where large crowds are expected.
TOT money would come in handy to offset the cost of all the extra garbgage removal.
Take care and bring your garbage home with you. OLS
Why aren’t people being charged on 4th of July? They can erect a fence and herd people through a toll booth, use the money to purchase roll off dumpsters. At least people were putting their bagged up trash next to the overflowing trash cans. Look how many businesses and locals spend their time and energy to clean up every year because the town doesn’t do a little bit better planning. Don’t want to collect money because you are afraid the people wont come??? Pftftftft whats 100 less out of 150,000? It seems pretty darned simple. Instead of it always being about the revenue that can be brought in, how about it being about the preservation of the lake and mountains.
I am not sure if everyone realises it or not but the city could well afford to clean up its own beaches. Which are El Dorado and Regan beaches, there should be no reason that volunteers should clean what is the cities resposibility. There is a ton of extra TOT generated that weekend, just one tenth of that extra would pay for that cleanup. All of the private beaches are cleaned up by the owners. The State and Federal beaches are cleaned up by the concessionares, as required by their contract.
That is not to say that if people want to help they will not be turned down by any of these entities. Free help who could refuse that?
The T.O.T. flows into the general fund. It’s not a separate revenue allocation. T.O.T. cannot be allocated for a specific use without 2/3 majority.
Slapshot very true, however the general fund budget can include money for beach cleanup. Though it seems the city would rather depend upon others to handle their responsibilities. There are many, many cities that have fireworks over beaches and those cities clean the beaches through their beach budgets.
It’s amazing how quickly people forget what’s happened in the recent past. Due to a lawsuit to end the fireworks over the Lake, the public and local businesses rallied and said they’d do the post July 4th and Labor Day holiday beach clean-ups to save the fireworks displays and prevent a loss of tourism business during those holidays. And as far as cleaning the City owned public beaches, isn’t that what the revenues from paid parking were earmarked for—the City’s clean-up, maintenance, and repairs to those highly used City owned public beach areas? Now some people suggest that taxpayer dollars from the General Fund or TOT should be allocated away from other uses that would benefit all local residents to pay for additional trash receptacles and staff’s clean-up of those beach areas. It would likely have been more cost effective to have those expenses borne by the messy beach users via the collection of parking fees versus SLTs taxpayers having to foot the entire bill.
Funny how things happen, but selective memory doesn’t change the past.
4-mer-USMC you pretty much nailed it. I’m baffled by how many locals expect the best in city services, don’t want to pay for it themselves, and then advocate actively dialing down the tourism industry. You know, the industry that is basically our only economic engine driving our RESORT economy.
4-mer: yup
Dog. More trash cans will not change the mentality of the litter bugs.
I noticed there wasn’t a single cash-redeemable bottle or can in that photo. The “pickers” I’ve seen will spread garbage all over the place to get aluminum cans or plastic bottles for easy cash. The problem might NOT be the tourists.