Clean Up the Lake Group Collects Over 14’000 LBS of litter from Donner Lake
Donner Lake, CA (February 3, 2025) – After months of dedicated effort, the Donner Lake Deep Cleaning Project has made incredible progress in removing submerged litter, surveying for aquatic invasive species (AIS), and restoring the lake’s underwater ecosystem at some of it’s deeper depths. With winter conditions setting in, the snow has been falling on these divers as they plunge into water temperatures as low as 36 degrees. Thankfully the team is using dry suits; as well as diver propulsion vehicles to move faster and nitrox gas to stay deeper, longer.
This project represents a unique set of partners that have come together to protect this water resource in Truckee’s backyard. Groups working with the non profit Clean Up The Lake to accomplish this harrowing task include Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, The Martis Fund, Tahoe Donner Giving Fund, the Town of Truckee, Truckee Tahoe Lumber Company, Lahontan Community Foundation held at Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation, and Drink Coffee Do Stuff with additional in-kind support from TDRPD.
To date, the dive team has successfully executed 18 cleanup dives over 11 days. During this time Clean Up The Lake volunteers removed 1,526.35 pounds of small submerged litter from the 35 to 55 ft depths of Donner Lake — roughly the weight of a dumpster filled with a piano and a large vending machine! That puts the total weight of submerged litter removed from Donner Lake by this team to 14,558 pounds. In addition to this, 20 different heavy lift items were GPS marked for future removal; bringing the total to 157 separate ‘heavy lift litter items’ still needing to be removed from Donner Lake. These items are usually defined as unsafe and too heavy for divers to remove (+/-75 lbs or more per item).
Our dedicated team has more dives to complete this winter in Donner Lake, yet the work has been promising. Not only are they remediating similar litter issues to what has been seen in the shallower depths in previous years, they have successfully tested out this new scuba cleanup protocol with DPVs and Nitrox gas. The organization has plans to use this protocol on Lake Tahoe this season, and possibly other lakes in the future.
In the meantime, we encourage our community to stay engaged and consider joining the effort. The non profit Clean Up The Lake has SCUBA classes for dry suits, diver propulsion vehicles, nitrox and more. Follow the non profit on Instagram @cleanupthelake or Tik Tok (if it is still around) and sign up for our email updates to get the latest news, volunteer opportunities, and behind-the-scenes stories from our cleanup adventures.
This project wouldn’t be possible without our 33 volunteers, who have collectively contributed 289.5 hours to the cause. Their dedication has been instrumental in making this cleanup a success, and we can’t wait to jump back into these icey waters soon, with the right gear of course!
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About Clean Up The Lake
Clean Up The Lake 501©3 is a nonprofit organization focused on fighting back against plastic and all forms of pollution, both above and below the surface of our local waterways, starting with Lake Tahoe. The organization uses SCUBA dive teams to do most of its work and has removed over 76,000 pounds of litter from under the surface lakes in the Sierra Nevada since 2020. The team has exciting plans for the future to continue to take action in litter removal while driving preventative efforts like conservation dive training, educational programming, and materials.
