FEATURES

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second part in a series covering the tourism impacts that locals and visitors alike have experienced this summer. Read Part I, “Tahoe’s tourism GRAPPLING WITH tipping point,” at TheTahoeWeekly.com.

GARBAGE BELOW Overflowing trash containers and dumped trash at Secline Beach. | Court Leve

&GRIEVANCES STORY BY PRIYA HUTNER

t only takes 110 steps from the end of my driveway to the small entryway to Donner Memorial State Park at the east end of Donner Lake. In the stretch of fewer than three-tenths of a mile on any I given day, I collect an entire bag of garbage, most of it on the road.

One evening I collected one yellow bathing suit top, five beer bottles, 10 beer cans, three disposable face masks, cigarette butts, napkins, tissues, an empty La Croix box, a windshield wiper and a trailer license plate. As I enter into the park, several signs from the Tahoe Fund mask campaign lie askew on the ground. Several bags of dog poop are stacked neatly in a pile in front of the signs. Behind the gate, more beer cans and a piece of Styrofoam. Once on the trail, I collected two pairs of children’s underwear, a small blue T-shirt, random pieces of paper and wrappers, half of an onion and a lot of toilet paper in the bushes only a few hundred yards from the portable toilets.

Mine is only one of the hundreds of stories plaguing the Tahoe Sierra. The lakes, rivers and trails of Tahoe have become dumping grounds for the unconscious, lazy and unaware. If it’s not couches being dumped in the woods, overflowing Dumpsters or people leaving trash just about any place you can think of, then it’s an increased level of graffiti marring the boulders, train tunnels and signs. Garbage this summer has caused the community a lot of grief.

The Tahoe Sierra is being trashed, but this isn’t a new problem in our community. This year it has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the sheer amount of people in the region, as local officials discussed in the first part of our series “Tahoe’s tourism tipping point” available at TheTahoeWeekly.com.

Locals in Tahoe are fed up and frustrated as garbage and graffiti have taken center stage in this pristine mountain region.

“Even before COVID, litter has been a major issue and has gone unchecked and has led us to where we are now,” says Court Leve, who founded Truckee Tahoe Litter Group on Facebook. “By ignoring the problem, it’s grown out of control. Have you ever seen anyone ‘educating’ or doing ‘positive messaging’ in your travels? Maybe at the entrance to a national park. And, do we really need to educate people on littering? Isn’t that something we learn in kindergarten? People respond to punishment. Speeding tickets work. DUIs work. Why the hesitancy of punishing people for destroying the environment?”

One potential upside is the that issue of trash this summer in Tahoe has received a lot of press across California and Nevada. Community members have banded together frustrated by the sheer amount of litter that has besieged the area. I asked Leve if he thinks the press and public outcry has made a difference.