More Than 25,000 Pounds of Debris Removed By Scuba Divers From Lake Tahoe

At more than two million years old and more than a mile above sea level, Lake Tahoe sits on the border of California and Nevada in the Northern Sierra Nevada mountains.

The water is so pure that it isn’t even required to be filtered by water suppliers.

Despite the remarkable purity of its water — 99.994 percent — Lake Tahoe does have a problem with debris.

Determined to tackle the problem, California nonprofit Clean Up the Lake organized volunteer scuba divers to remove litter from the lake’s entire 72-mile shoreline.

The divers were tasked with removing garbage from the first 25 feet beneath the surface of the lake and what they collected was astounding.

According to nonprofit the Tahoe Fund, the divers recovered 25,281 pounds of trash that included engagement rings, Nikon cameras from the 1980s, large pieces of boats, lampposts, wallets and, of course, plastic bottles.

According to Clean Up the Lake, 24,797 items of debris were removed from the lake. The trash included 4,527 aluminum cans, 295 pairs of sunglasses, 171 tires and 127 boat anchors.

According to West, most of the litter made it into the lake accidentally, reported The Guardian.

Lake Tahoe has a maximum depth of more than 1,600 feet. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, between 1968 and 1997, the deep-water clarity of Lake Tahoe suffered a decline from 100 to 64 feet — about a 30 percent reduction — due to algae and particles of fine sediment. The fine sediment particles are the cause of about two-thirds of the impairment of the lake’s clarity.