Lake Chelan cleaned of trash and debris in Restore the Shore event

“Wildly successful” was the description given by Phil Long of the Lake Chelan Research Institute following the weekend Lake Chelan shoreline trash and debris clean-up.

When compared to last year, twice as many community volunteers turned out.

"The amount of trash we got was great," said Anna Galipeau of the Lake Chelan Research Institute, which organized the event. " We got some boat bumpers, parts of docks, tires, big pieces of foam, lots of confetti. Somebody had a non-environmentally friendly party on the beach. Golf balls, glass bottles, frisbees, just all kids of things that you can imagine."

"A snowman Christmas ornament was what we awarded as the most unique item" that was found, Galipeau added.

A team of Chelan High School students collected bags of trash along the Riverwalk Trail.

Dozens of bags of trash and debris was removed from the lake and its shoreline, including plastic bottles.

"Mircro-plastics are kind of a hot topic right now, Galipeau noted. "It really is true that the plastics break-down, especially with the sun. All these micro-plastics and stuff is going right into our water."

On Friday, volunteers also picked up a surprisingly large amount of trash in and around Stehekin.

Trash and debris found on the Lake Chelan shoreline at Stehekin on April 11.