Park Service overwhelmed with Lake Mead litter

By Cassie Tomlin

Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 | 2:29 p.m.

Last fall, Martin Dean Dupalo and a couple friends launched their small boat for a pleasant day in a Lake Mead cove, but they could hardly believe their eyes as they approached the shore to dock.

Beer cans, a tire, dead fish, shoes and deflated rafts scattered the rocks like they were seashells.

Not ones to mope about a beach wasted, the crew loaded as much waste as would fit in the boat's bow and scooted back to the marina to dump it where it belonged, in trash and recycling bins.

Dupalo, who teaches at UNLV, was disappointed by the trash and the visitors who left it.

"It was more than an eyesore. It was a million sad and negative thoughts in moments," he said.

The Lake Mead National Recreation Center sees 7.4 million visitors a year and the Park Service is having trouble keeping up with the trash those visitors leave, spokesman Andrew Muñoz said.

Despite providing free trash bags and bins and reminding visitors to leave the lake with everything they brought in, the Park Service finds the waste piles up every day, Muñoz said.

The Park Service will resume an agreement later this month for men from Three Lakes Valley Conservation Camp, a state prison in Indian Springs, to clean up Boulder Basin once a week.

The crews had cleaned the recreational area four days a week until last summer, when the Park Service canceled the service .

In September, October and November, crews picked up trash once a week, but stopped for December and January, Muñoz said.

The inmates provide help to the basin's small maintenance crew, which has more responsibilities than just picking up after visitors.

The program with the state Division of Forestry costs the Park Service about $1,000 each day prisoners come, Muñoz said, which is overwhelming the budget for the cleanups.

The Park Service is negotiating a contract that would lessen the cost, he said, but couldn't provide details.

In addition, the Park Service will soon sponsor an "Adopt-A-Cove" program that would provide a Park Service boat and guide to take groups out to clean up coves for the day, Muñoz said.

Dupalo said he hopes the cove cleanups make a difference, and he hopes park-goers will learn to be more responsible for respecting the lake and its lands.

"Ultimately, it's not the professional National Park Service or our menial deeds that will make the difference," he said. "It's unfortunately those that continue to pollute that will determine if, as the 1970s campaign read, we all 'Keep America Beautiful.'"

For more information about that future project or about scheduling a trash pickup, contact Nancy Bernard at 293-8714.

Cassie Tomlin can be reached at 948-2073 or [email protected].