BASS LAKE – Calling all who want to make the world a better place by picking up litter around the shores and trails at Bass Lake: the Bass Lake Spring Clean is Saturday, May 10, at 9 a.m. Volunteers meet at Recreation Point to receive gloves, bags, and water, all provided courtesy of organizers.
This kind of work builds up an appetite, and luckily, a full BBQ lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m. for participating volunteers.
The morning starts off at Rec Point with complimentary coffee and snacks, and a welcome that includes details of the day’s activities, like the drawing for exciting prizes.
After receiving empty garbage bags and sanitary gloves, some volunteer trash-picker-uppers choose to drive to other areas of the lake.
“The more people disperse around the area, the more trash they get,” said Michelle Fuerstein, the Operations Manager of the Northern Sierra National Forest, with California Land Management’s (CLM) Sierra Recreation Division, the group that runs the campgrounds and day use areas around Bass Lake and beyond. The Division sponsors the Bass Lake Spring Clean day.
Though the local lake may look clean on first glance, a more careful examination reveals a grittier, more styrofoam-filled truth.
“There’s plenty of trash, especially when you look closely at it,” Feuerstein commented. “Trash continually gets dumped; it’s not something that ends.”
The top offenders in trash are bread ties and twists, according to recent history. Another common find is the sheer plastic straw cover – the cello – that goes with every kid’s juice box and slips away before one even knows it’s gone.
Volunteers on clean-up duty have found tires, brake rotors, broken ice chests, styrofoam and once, a mattress. Every year, as people return their garbage-filled bags to the Recreation Center, the mound of garbage grows.
Participants will be given a raffle ticket for each bag of trash they turn in. In the past, prizes have been given away courtesy of local businesses, including T-shirts, gift certificates and other often valuable surprises.
This is a family-friendly event.
For more information email Michele Fuerstein.
