by Richard Uhlhorn
The third annual Restore the Beach event will take place on Saturday, April 12 at various locations around the lake. It is a chance for the community to help the lake’s beaches clean of debris and trash that gets dropped into the lake when it is full.
This year’s event will begin at the Lake Chelan Marina parking lot and other locations around the lake (see map). The idea is to pick up and remove as much trash as possible throughout the morning hours.
“This is my passion project,” said Anna Galipeau, an employee at the Lake Chelan Research Institute (LCRI).
Her passion began in high school where students were asked to pick a community impact project. “I decided to pick up trash and thought it was interesting” She was fascinated by the diversity of trash she collected.
Her passion for trash has led her to individually work several areas around the lake including State Park, Manson beaches and Willow Point Park area. It is amazing the stuff she has recovered from the lakeshore.
Phil Long, Institute director said, “Students from the Chelan Project do a log of heavy lifting.” April Slagle’s environmental class works the beach at Chelan River and along the beach at the Chelan Ranger District.
On Saturday,the main group will meet at the City Marina Parking Lot. Meeting at the parking lot is optional, and you are more than welcome to go directly to your preferred cleanup site. Please “bring your own bag or bucket”, preferably reusable, because we want to minimize our environmental impact while we restore the beach.
At the parking lot, students from The Chelan Project will be organizing groups to cover specific sections of beach. A certain number of canvas bags and 5-gallon buckets will be provided for people to use, but we ask that you please return them to us at the end of the cleanup.
If you are cleaning up a section of shoreline that is not highlighted on the map, please let us know the general location of where you picked up trash by texting Anna at 425-765-4449. This helps us create a comprehensive analysis of how much lakeshore was restored!
This year, Restore the Beach will be utilizing an app called TrashBlitz created by the 5 Gyres Institute to create a log of all the trash that is collected. The app is free to download on Google Play or the App Store and can be found at https://www.5gyres.org/trashblitz.
Paper forms will also be provide so participants can log their trash in place of utilizing the app. Because we want to make sure that we are documenting all the trash that is collected, there is also the option to drop off your collected trash at our office location at 601 W. Woodin Avenue. Bins will be placed outside of the office for you to leave your collected trash in.
For those individuals or groups who will not be near our office location, please contact Anna at 425-765-4449 and we will make arrangements to come pick up the trash at your collection location. The main takeaway here is to have a complete record of all the trash collected from the lake!
In addition to picking up trash, volunteers are encouraged to pick up fragments of aquatic weeds like milfoil to help prevent milfoil growth when the lake rises.
Also volunteers are encouraged to take photos of algae to help the institute map and track what happens when the lake level rises. Photos can be texted to Phil Long at 509-531-2987.
Galipeau was an awardee of the 5 Gyres’ TrashBlitz Ambassador Action Fund! This fund is intended to be used by the recipient to organize a TrashBlitz cleanup project on federal land. In Anna Galipeau’s application, she chose the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area in Stehekin as the intended site for her cleanup project.
This clean-up project will take place on Friday, April 11. It will be the first time the Restore the Beach effort will be in the remote community of Stehekin. Ten volunteers will be given passage to Stehekin to collect trash that has accumulated over the years.
Restore the Beach is a great time for volunteers to get out of the house and walk the beaches before the lake fills from snow runoff. In addition, volunteers will be helping Keep Lake Chelan Blue.
All Things Lake Chelan 