LGA Volunteer and board member Salim Amersi works as part of a LGA beach clean-up effort after Tropical Storm Irene.
Tropical Storm Irene left large amounts of debris on the beaches at the southern end of Lake George, and due to the wide-spread damage caused by the storm, officials weren’t able to attend to it immediately. On Saturday, September 17th, volunteers from the Lake George Association stepped in to remove the debris and rake up the beaches.
“Tropical Storm Irene created a real mess along Million Dollar and Dog Beach, and I saw that it wasn’t getting cleaned up very quickly, so the LGA got on it,” said Mike Grasso, an LGA volunteer and board member. “There were pieces of asphalt in the Lake near the West Brook Inlet, lots of blue Styrofoam, empty water bottles, and lots of other manmade and natural debris everywhere. This past Saturday LGA volunteers raked it all up before it could float back out into the Lake,” he said.
“The area is once again pleasant for walking and in good shape for our shoulder season tourists,” said Walt Lender, LGA executive director. “But its’ not just about aesthetics, this was a water quality problem too. We wanted to make sure to pick up the plastic, especially the Styrofoam, before it returned to the Lake,” he said.
Styrofoam is a particularly bad product for the environment because it does not biodegrade, and is not easily recycled. It crumbles into fragments that have no expiration date, and persists indefinitely as litter, breaking up into pieces that choke and clog animal digestive systems in waterways.