By 8 a.m. Saturday the parking lots along the western shore were full, and by noon the dumpsters were too. Organizers with the Lakefront Alliance say this year’s spring cleanup drew more than 400 volunteers — nearly double last year’s turnout — who collected an estimated three tons of debris across four miles of shoreline.
“Every year we think we’ve finally gotten ahead of it, and every year the lake proves us wrong,” said Marisol Greene, the Alliance’s volunteer coordinator. “But the trend line is real. Ten years ago we were pulling out twice this much from half the distance.”
What they found
The haul included the usual suspects and a few surprises:
- Roughly 1,900 pounds of scrap metal, including two shopping carts and a bicycle frame
- More than 60 bags of plastic bottles and food packaging
- A refrigerator, avocado green, that county staff dated to the mid-1970s
- Four tires, one still mounted on a rim
County parks officials say the refrigerator will be displayed at the visitor center this summer as part of an exhibit on the lake’s recovery.
A long recovery, still going
Onondaga Lake was once ranked among the most polluted lakes in the country. Decades of industrial dumping and municipal sewage overflows left the lakebed contaminated and the fishery collapsed. A federally supervised cleanup, largely completed in the last decade, has brought back bass tournaments, bald eagles and — slowly — public trust.
The Alliance’s next event, a native-plantings day at the inner harbor, is scheduled for the second weekend of May. Registration is free and open to all ages.
