Fewer prison cleanups mean more trash at Lake Mead

Richard Brian

A garbage container is seen at Boulder Beach shore at Lake Mead earlier this month.

By Cassie Tomlin (contact)

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008 | 8:17 a.m.

Richard Brian

A beer bottle litters the shore at Lake Mead earlier this month.

A lack of prisoner cleanups on Lake Mead's beaches this summer might have resulted in more lingering litter than usual, officials said.

Men from the Three Lakes Valley Conservation Camp in Indian Springs had been bagging up trash left behind in the Boulder Basin four days a week for about a year, camp supervisor Randy Walkup said. From the mid-1990s until last year, inmates from the minimum-security facility had picked up trash once or twice a week.

But two months ago, the National Park Service canceled the cleanups, realizing it was burning too quickly through it's $150,000 agreement with the Nevada Division of Forestry, which oversees the inmate work, spokesman Andrew Munoz said.

The change has left Lake Mead National Recreation Area's small maintenance crews alone with visitors' rubbish, which has always been a problem at the beaches, Munoz said.

"It's a struggle," he said. "(The beaches are) here for the American public to enjoy, but unfortunately sometimes they enjoy them but don't take care of them."

The cleanups were costing the Park Service about $1,000 a day, Munoz said. The Park Service estimates there's a little more than $100,000 budgeted until 2011. He said the Park Service will soon revamp its agreement with the Division of Forestry so inmates can resume helping with the trash.

Especially after times of heavy traffic, like Labor Day's three-day weekend, lake-goers leave behind trash at picnic areas, tents and bottles on the shoreline and even couches in coves, Jim Massie, supervisory facility operations specialist, said.

Walkup said the 13-inmate crews couldn't keep up with all of the trash even during five or six hours a day four days a week.

The National Park Service provides free trash bags and Dumpsters at the beach and suggests visitors take everything out they take in, Munoz said, but that approach hasn't worked.

The trash burdens the maintenance crews, especially the eight-member group in charge of Boulder Basin's maintenance — all of its restrooms, beaches, campgrounds, trash cans, lodges and water systems.

"They've got a full plate," Massie said.

He said if visitors would just walk as far as the nearest trash can, food left on tables wouldn't attract birds and other wildlife, which compounds the problem.

"The biggest thing is, the general public could help us and help themselves at the same time if they'd dispose of trash in the proper way," he said. "Litter is an ongoing problem in almost any national park, and I don't have an answer on how to solve it. We do our best to try to come up with creative ways to make the park enjoyable for visitors to experience."

Nancy Bernard, volunteer coordinator, said the Park Service is hosting an Oct. 4 cleanup at Government Wash.

She said beginning February, she plans about 30 cleanups until the next fall.