New statue created from trash removed from Lake Tahoe

(FOX40.COM) - - Keeping Lake Tahoe's water blue is an ongoing mission for those living in the Sierra Nevada and on Wednesday an irreversible acknowledgment of those efforts was completed with the unveiling of the statue, "Surfaced.".

The statue is of a bald eagle and a trout and was produced utilizing part of the trash collected by dive teams during the year-long Clean Up the Lake project.

Artists Joel Dean Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova of Building 180 developed the statue with assistance from the Tahoe Fund and Tahoe Blue Vodka.

" I believe public art has a real power to inspire individuals and bring delight to individuals's lives," Stockdill said. "There are numerous individuals both residents and tourists that pertain to visit this area and see this piece and hopefully it brightens their day.".



The statue is located at the Tahoe Blue Event Center in South Lake Tahoe.

Tidy up the Lake had an objective of collecting 25,000 pounds of garbage from below the waves of Lake Tahoe by using qualified scuba divers.

Divers start eliminating invasive water plants from Emerald Bay.

The job resulted in 25,821 pounds of trash being collected throughout 72 miles of Lake Tahoe. There were 81 dive days with 189 total dives and 136 volunteers devoting more than 6,700 hours to the clean-up effort.

Future efforts to tidy up Lake Tahoe by Clean up the Lake include planning deeper dives into the lake at around 45 to 70 feet to remove litter and evaluate the garbage build-up in those locations.