Visitors left 8,000 pounds of July Fourth trash on Tahoe beaches
The July Fourth trash on Tahoe beaches set a depressing new record for a region already...
In 1977 I worked for beach maintenance in the city of Santa Monica we had 3000 55 gallon garbage cans on a two mile stretch of beach. on the morning of 5th of July we started the beach clean up at 2 am with 2 3axle 6x6 garbage trucks, 4 tractors pulling sand rakes to rake the trash into rows so that the tractor pulling the sand sifter could dump the trash that missed the cans into 6x6 dump trucks. At first light the 60 man crew of pickers headed out to get what was missed , they carried canvas shoulder bags and a spiked staff.
The garbage trucks made 4 trips to the transfer station to dump their loads before the second shift came on and did the same, the 6x6s did double that. the pickers would empty their shoulder bags into the now emptied 55 gallon drums as they walked along. It would take us 3-4 days to get 95% of the trash left on the beaches cleaned up. And that is why they charge $6 per car to park at the beach, to cover the cost of cleaning up the mess left behind
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