Thousands of college students trashed a California lake last weekend
Thousands of college students trashed a California lake last weekend
By Alec Regimbal, Politics Reporter
May 30, 2024
A wide shot of Shasta Lake with Mount Shasta in the background in Siskiyou County, Calif., on April 11, 2024. A group of roughly 3,000 college students from UC Davis and the University of Oregon trashed the lake over Memorial Day weekend.
Photo Courtesy by U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
A group of roughly 3,000 college students from UC Davis and the University of Oregon trashed Shasta Lake over Memorial Day weekend, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Debbie Carlisi, a recreation officer with the agency’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest division, told SFGATE in an interview that the students left bottles, cups, wrappers and cans behind when they left for home, so much so that crews spent six hours this week picking up trash. She said some students even threw their trash in the lake itself despite being given trash bags by forest service employees. … “The problem is there was a lot of stuff that was left in the lake,” Carlisi said. “That's going to cause a problem with our fish and wildlife, and it decreases the recreation experience for our next visitors.”
The forest service will have to wait for the lake’s water level to recede to retrieve some of the trash, which likely won’t happen until late June or early July, Carlisi said. The students, who told Forest Service officials where they attended university, rented roughly 130 houseboats and camped out on Slaughterhouse Island in the lake’s southwestern region. … When asked what she would tell the students now, Carlisi said, “If you were bringing your family out here with you, would you want to find this mess when you were camping?”
Carlisi said the Forest Service had a much different experience with another large group of students from Oregon State University, who camped out on the lake over Mother’s Day. … Carlisi said 40 of those students, out of an original group of roughly 1,600, rented five houseboats and stayed behind an extra day after the rest of the group left to ensure that the area was clean. She said the students from UC Davis and the University of Oregon had assured park service employees that they would do as good of a job cleaning up after themselves as the Oregon State University students did.
{snip}
Alec Regimbal
POLITICS REPORTER
Alec Regimbal is a politics reporter at SFGATE. He graduated from Western Washington University with a bachelor's degree in journalism. A Washington State native, Alec previously wrote for the Yakima Herald-Republic and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He also spent two years as a political aide in the Washington State Legislature.
= new reply since forum marked as read
University of Oregon and UC Davis have tighter admission standards and are more expensive to attend than Oregon State University (note all three universities cited are State schools). Oregon State students are on average more conservative where students from UC Davis and University of Oregon in Eugene tend to be more liberal and progressive. Would bet all the student groups at Shasta Lake were predominantly Caucasian.
Something is off about the USFS. I worked for the USFS from 1969 to 1985, the last 4 years as on the Shasta-Trinity NF Ranger District that includes the Trinity Lake NRA. Now a civilian and mostly clueless about USFS inner workings. But groups of that size would be required to have detailed Use Permits regarding number, debris disposal, etc. Back during my time on the Shasta-Trinity, the Rainbow Family had one of their national gatherings on the Shasta-Trinity. Universities had similar houseboat events as well, but I don't recall any as large.
from wiki:
"The Rainbow Family of Living Light is a counter-culture, in existence since approximately 1970. It is a loose affiliation of individuals, some nomadic, generally asserting that it has no leader. They put on yearly, primitive camping events on public land known as Rainbow Gatherings.
cut
All Rainbow Gatherings are held with an open invitation to people of all walks of life, and of all beliefs, to share experiences, love, dance, music, food, learning, and to pray for world peace.[citation needed]
The Rainbow Family is best known for its large annual American Gatherings (i.e., U.S. "Nationals" or "Annuals"
which are held on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (or B.L.M.) land.
cut
The Forest Service Incident Management team cost federal taxpayers $750,000 in 2006[dubious – discuss] (this cost is for 'monitoring' of the Rainbows),[9] and the team handled the Gathering in Colorado that year and other large events in National Forests. By comparison, the Burning Man festival, unconnected to the Rainbow Gatherings, is a commercial venture that operates each year in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada and pays the Bureau of Land Management $750,000 for a permit, recouping the cost by charging attendees between $210 and $360. The Rainbow Family asserts that being charged $750,000 dollars to gather peaceably on National Forest Land is a violation of their First Amendment rights, and that the event is free to all members of the public."
The National Forests are far more regulated at present than back in the 1980s (live on an inholding on adjacent Six Rivers NF). I cannot fathom that there were not permits issued and the events planned for and monitored by the Feds. The good students from Oregon State were at Shasta Lake before the bad students from University of Oregon and UC Davis. During time with USFS personally worked on many timber sale and service contracts, some people one worked with were jerks but there was a protocol and way to address problems. Suspect there was a share of failure on the part of the USFS in not permitting or successfully monitoring the events, maybe as simple as being surprised by scope and not issuing a group permit or identifying persons for contacts. Looks to me like the students made a mess but that the USFS failed to recognize or manage the events. The other weird thing is that every year when Winter runoff eases in June or early Summer, Shasta Lake and Trinity Lake are skimmed for debris from the runoff as regular maintenance. Trinity Lake is a slightly smaller reservoir on the Ranger District where I worked 81-85. Resigned when Reagan was POTUS. Reagan broke what Nixon and Carter had created. Wonder if the mess is being used as opportunity to bash college students from liberal schools?
Note have a BS Forest Science from Cal from 70s, MBA from Cal's Haas B-School in 80s, and 2 years towards a never completed PhD at Oregon State in late 90s.
What is going on?? 
