"Shocking" storm of plastic styrofoam beads cover Lake Tahoe beaches

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. - A floating dock that became loose during a recent storm leased an estimated 100,000 (or more) plastic styrofoam beads onto the pristine beaches of Ski Beach and Incline Beach in Incline Village, Nevada.

In what Clean Up The Lake organizers are saying, this shocking environmental incident. The incident was discovered on Sunday, January 7 by Madonna Dunbar at Incline Village General Improvement District (IVGID). Dunbar and IVGID quickly sounded the alarm to the environmental non-profit Clean Up The Lake who mobilized a large-scale beach cleanup to address the issue early on the morning of January 8.

The floating dock, believed to have come from the northeast shore of Lake Tahoe, broke free during the high wind event that occurred on Saturday, January 6, causing the unintended release of plastic beads along a large section of the Incline Village shoreline. These beads, believed to be made of expanded polystyrene, can have detrimental effects on aquatic life and pose serious threats to the overall health of the environment. These threats include the further breakdown of these beads into microplastics which aggravate an already troubling issue for Lake Tahoe.

Members of the IVGID Parks and Recreation team removed the dock early on the morning of January 8. Following the removal of the dock, Clean Up The Lake’s entire staff and 25-30 volunteers from their organization and groups like IVGID, Diamond Peak Ski Resort, and the local Rotary Club all worked together to clean up the beach.

Staff and volunteers used every tactic and piece of equipment possible to remove the beads from the beaches. Pasta strainers, shovels, leaf blowers and tarps, shop vacuums, sifts, screens and buckets to float the styrofoam beads, and more were all techniques utilized during the effort. The size of the beads and the fact that the storm churned the beads into the sand and snow made the cleanup an extremely challenging effort. Clean Up The Lake estimated nearly 100,000 plastic styrofoam beads may have made their way onto the beach, and their efforts on January 8th removed close to 90 percent of the pollutant.

This means that thousands of these beads remain mixed into the sand and snow. Clean Up The Lake is reaching out to other agencies and non-profits in the basin with further technology to consider support and further remediation where possible; yet the size of the beads makes additional cleanup past this point extremely challenging.

The incident serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing challenges posed by plastic pollution and that we all need to do whatever possible to prevent issues like this from happening.

Efforts to prevent these issues should include:

-Corporations involved in manufacturing considering other non-plastic material types to build with

-Governments and agencies addressing further opportunities in regulation to prevent pollutants being used as construction materials and within certain equipment near our lakes and waterways

-Individuals researching what baby toys, dog toys or other recreational materials they bring near the water’s edge are made of so we can prevent accidents that release these pollutants into the lake

-If individuals have boats or docks on the water, batten down the hatches before the next storm.