Lake Tahoe July 4th partygoers leave behind 8,500 pounds of trash: ‘Looked like a landfill’

NY Post ^ | 07/06/2023 | Katherine Donlevy

[ChicagoConservative27]

Lake Tahoe was transformed into a “landfill” Tuesday after Fourth of July partygoers left behind a record-breaking 4 tons of trash surrounding the massive freshwater basin.

Over 8,559 pounds of cigarette butts, plastic food wrappers, beach toys, beer boxes — and even barbecues — were collected Wednesday by environmental cleanup volunteers during the 10th annual July 5th “Keep Tahoe Red, White & Blue” Beach Cleanup.

It took 402 good Samaritans three hours to rake up the colossal piles of trash that the Keep Tahoe Blue collective said was “tragically an all-time high.”

Lake Tahoe needs your help.

This is the scene from Zephyr Cove this morning. It’s quite a hangover

[skeeter]

Never used to be this way.

[skeeter]

Glad someone else noticed. They even look similar & they’re all over the place on the weekends.

[Leep]

Ye shall no them by their litter.

[dfwgator]

Sounds Like the Washington Mall after “Erf Day”.

[Openurmind]

But the local soulless “business cult” is absolutely fine with destroying their own neighborhood as long as they make a temporary buck off them...

[eyeamok]

We did a lot of camping and going places when I grew up and the RULES were simple, you pack it in you pack it out. Nowadays I see the proud liberal tree hugger hiking and their faithful minions Just Leaving all their Trash wherever they are.

There is a mountain right by my house that is a very popular place to go when it snows or when the California Poppies are in full bloom, it attracts Thousands and they just leave all their trash on the side of the road.

Pretty disgusting and I think they should video the whole thing , and FINE the shit out of ALL OF THEM!!!

[1Old Pro]

you pack it in you pack it out.

Pretty much SOP, take out what you take in.

[antidemoncrat]

Ten to one the celebration was mostly attended by Gen Zeros and Millennials who seem to me to be generations that consider themselves to be privileged and just expect older folks to clean up whatever mess they make ... the Democrats have taught them well.

[17th Miss Regt]

We might want to replace public schools with schools that teach people manners, respect for property, etc.

Ahh, yes! Academies of fascism, racism and white supremacy!

[Vaduz]

It’s California Jim

[Vaduz]

Yes and road signs are for other people they don’t drive they aim the car.

[MinorityRepublican]

Park Rangers should fine them for littering.

[Organic Panic]

One of my favorite places I ever lived. I never saw litter the years I lived there. I have a feeling the trash people from Sac invade constantly now. I would love to see the demographics of the crowd.

[Rj Snows]

City Folk

[sit-rep]

Have you seen how many whites OF ALL AGES applaud this so called Street Art in major cities!!?? It truly disgusts me that even when asked, whites DO NOT CARE that’s it’s done to someone else’s property mainly because if they did, they would have to draw a line on wether it’s ok or not...

[fruser1]

While I certainly agree it’s best not to leave a mess, this could’ve been mitigated by simply having some trash cans available.

Public works used to provide this simple service, but ultimately has adopted the “take it with you” approach which allows the government to reduce it’s expenditures while simultaneously NOT reducing taxes.

Believe it or not, it is actually possible to make littering illegal AND have trash cans maintained by civil employees.

[deport]

Believe it or not, it is actually possible to make littering
illegal AND have trash cans maintained by civil employees.
**********

Depending upon location and laws it may could be possible to
use incarcerated people as clean up crews. Some would like it
being out of the cell and seeing a little of the country side. jmo

[irishjuggler]

I occasionally mention my hypothesis that, aside from maybe Burning Man, Tahoe is the greatest magnet for every idiot in Northern California.

[Karliner]

Agree, and Arcata has the leftover retards

[rlmorel]

I don't understand it either.

It is defacing property. Period. I look at it no differently than someone spray painting a neighbor's garage with their disgusting doodles.

It isn't beautiful. It isn't art.

It is VANDALISM.

In the town I grew up in, there is a rock on a state road that ran between two towns. People began painting this rock back in the twenties, and the rock is very flat, is about 10 feet high, 15 feet wide, and comes to a point. It is very nearly right on the border between the towns, it faces the northbound lanes from the southbound side of the road, and is situated right after a causeway between two lakes. There is a big turnround area, perhaps 30 yards or so. There is very rare foot traffic, there are no houses or buildings nearby, pretty much, you only see it as you drive by. The rock is halfway up a small hill, and the earth all around it, in the front, up the sides, and around the back has been eroded by a century of human foot traffic. I was drunk once, and nearly fell off the top while hanging over it in an attempt to paint high up. That was as a teenager. As I got older, we brought ladders with us...:)

Everyone, from towns all around, refers to it as "The Rock". And everyone knows what it refers to.

The paint is layered at least half a foot thick, and recently, it delaminated, and a large section of that paint fell off.

It is painted for the high school football rivalry between the towns, birthdays, weddings, deaths, championships, you name it. And people have been painting it for nearly a century. My mother and father both knew of people painting it when they were little kids. I have personally painted it between 20 and 30 times, most recently, just a few years ago with a large group of people when this woman we all knew passed on:

We painted it white, let it dry, took a bunch of drywall screws and created a grid with string to transfer the image from a photo to a rock. Those drywall screws went right into that paint! I wasn't good enough artistically to transfer the photo freehand. We then used a magic marker to lay out the general outline from the photo. It didn't come out perfect, but it was our tribute to someone we respected. This is how it came out:

Point is, this is the kind of thing you see on this rock. In all the years I did it, we would paint it with as few as one or two people, or have crowds of twenty to thirty particpating and hobnobbing. While we did it, even as teenagers, the cops would occasionally pull in and watch, but they never chased anyone off that I can remember.

Very rarely would there be foul language painted there, which was pretty remarkable considering all the age groups. Occasionally, there would be absolutely beautiful artwork that someone took time to put up there.

And any message up there rarely lasts more than a week, even in the dead of winter. It gets painted over so often, that is is hard not to just understand it, although as a teenager, I got into a fight with a bunch of big city guys who had painted the rock a day or two before, and didn't want us to paint over it. So we had a fight, and we rolled down that hill from the base, clutching and swinging as we tumbled.

Years ago, before I went into the Navy, on my eighteenth birthday (a month before I went in) they had a big surprise party for me, and one of the gifts was a rock, with that same general shape and flat face, about 8 inches across and six inches high, a small jar of Testors green paint, a jar of white paint, and a paint brush...:)

I was bored one day, and painted that piece of rock up to resemble one of my better known paint jobs that stayed up for a little while...I still have that rock today, using it as a book end...

What I have seen up there, for the fifty years I was aware of it, was not vandalism. It wasn't ugly. It was constantly painted by a community of people who understood that it was a open canvas billboard for people of all ages to paint whatever and whenever they wanted to. And people rarely abused it by putting crap on it like we see everywhere now.

Graffiti, like what is commonly seen now makes me angry. It is malicious, dirty, and unsightly, especially in populated areas.