(FOX40.COM) — Keeping Lake Tahoe’s water blue is an ongoing mission for those living in the Sierra Nevada and on Wednesday a permanent recognition of those efforts was completed with the unveiling of the statue, “Surfaced.”
The statue is of a bald eagle and a trout and was created using 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 created the statue with support from the Tahoe Fund and Tahoe Blue Vodka.
“I think public art has a real power to inspire people and bring joy to people’s lives,” Stockdill said. “There are so many people both locals and tourists that come to visit this spot and see this piece and hopefully it brightens their day.”
The statue is located at the Tahoe Blue Event Center in South Lake Tahoe.
Clean Up the Lake had a mission of collecting 25,000 pounds of trash from below the waves of Lake Tahoe by using trained divers.
The project resulted in 25,821 pounds of trash being collected across 72 miles of Lake Tahoe. There were 81 dive days with 189 total dives and 136 volunteers dedicating more than 6,700 hours to the clean-up effort.
Future efforts to clean 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 analyze the trash accumulation in those areas.
