Divers pulled 25,000 pounds of trash from Lake Tahoe. Now they want to clean more Sierra lakes

Divers from the nonprofit Clean Up the Lake collect debris from the bottom of Lake Tahoe in July. Over the course of a year, divers brought up 25,000 pounds of trash.

And divers hope to repeat the feat for more lakes in the region, including Fallen Leaf, a small lake adjacent to Tahoe, and June Lake, a popular fishing and camping destination in the Eastern Sierra.

In Tahoe, divers — aided by boaters and other volunteers — made 189 dives over 81 days. They pulled out cell phones, sunglasses, flip-flops, vape pens, cigarette butts, condoms, golf balls, ice cream sticks, broken fishing gear and plastic bags, as well as countless aluminum cans, and plastic and glass bottles. Divers also excavated oddities like spent fireworks tubes, sex toys and a boom box, in addition to cumbersome objects like car tires and building materials that likely were dumped intentionally. Larger, heavier items, like rusted engine blocks or abandoned sunken boats, were geotagged in the hopes they can be retrieved later with burlier equipment.

“It’s been a long year, and I’m feeling thankful we were able to get this done,” said Colin West, founder of Clean Up the Lake, the local nonprofit behind the cleanup.

The cleanup went down only 25 feet; Tahoe is much deeper — over 1,600 feet at its deepest point — but diving to greater depths brings complex safety hazards.

The lake has lost some of its signature clarity in recent years due to the proliferation of invasive species and continuing sediment runoff. Scooping up litter is unlikely to improve its overall health, researchers say, but has raised awareness of the various environmental issues plaguing Tahoe.

The first project of West’s group was an underwater cleanup of nearby Donner Lake in 2020 that rendered more than 5,100 pounds of trash. When West announced the Tahoe venture later that year, widespread concerns about the impacts to the lake from millions of pandemic tourists helped propel it to prominence; the group raised about $300,000 for the effort, including a $60,000 grant from the Nevada Division of State Lands.

Now, West has secured partial funding for underwater cleanups at June and Fallen Leaf lakes.

Divers are also going back to Donner Lake to measure how much trash has accumulated in the past two years and mark where it collects in the underwater landscape. They will also collect data on algal blooms and invasive species for scientific research.

Divers from the nonprofit Clean Up the Lake have worked for a year to remove garbage from the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Now they hope to move on to cleaning other Sierra Lakes.

West will start a similar monitoring effort on Tahoe’s Nevada side this year, looking at what trash is collecting at depths of up to 75 feet.

“We want to see how deep this problem goes,” West said.

A heightened awareness of discarded construction debris in the lake prompted the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, which oversees building projects in the Tahoe Basin, to add a new requirement to shoreline building permits this year: Builders must provide “visual documentation” of the underwater landscape around the work site before and after construction to ensure the area is clean.

Most of the trash recovered from Tahoe in the past year has been recycled or otherwise disposed of properly, West said. But some will be used in the creation of an art installation at the new Tahoe South Events Center, a large convention venue being built near the South Shore casinos that is slated to open in 2023.

According to Amy Berry, CEO of the Tahoe Fund, which coordinated fundraising for Clean Up the Lake, “Our hope is that it will inspire greater environmental stewardship and remind those who love Lake Tahoe that it’s up to all of us to take care of it.”

Lake Tahoe

Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle's editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Twitter: @GregRThomas