Volunteers removed 233 tons of debris during the 18th Annual Spring Shoreline Beautification Cleanup effort this spring. Litter and debris from more than 500 miles of shoreline was removed by 864 volunteers from 68 Adopt-the-Shoreline member groups and countless residents, second homeowners and over civic-minded individuals.
A waterlogged 4-foot-by-8-foot piece of 18-inch thick styrofoam can weigh as much as 500 to 600 pounds.
“Ninety percent of what we removed has been non-encapsulated boat dock foam,” says Bryan Vance, field coordinator, Lake of the Ozarks Shoreline Management. “Styrofoam has an indefinite life. It never goes away. It breaks up into small beads and ends up on the beaches.
“It will actually cover large parts of the lake where it makes it unattractive to swim or boat. It just becomes unsightly where people don’t want to come down to enjoy the Lake of the Ozarks,” Vance adds.
The volunteers and AmerenUE Shoreline Management staff hope the days of seeing foam debris washed up on the shoreline are numbered.
“We think this will be another hard year of removing dock flotation,” Vance says. “We’re hopeful that in the next few years it will just be soda bottles and normal household trash that happens to blow off a dock or something that someone inadvertently loses out of their boat.”
UE banned any new installation of non-encapsulated foam in 1995.
Overall, Vance and Friedrich say the lake community does an excellent job of policing 500 miles of shoreline. Ameren founded the Adopt-the-Shoreline program in 1992, which has grown to 68 local organizations adopting 89 miles of shoreline.
“We have a great group of volunteers in the Adopt-the-Shoreline program and we have thousands of homeowners that help us out every year with cleaning up the trash around the lake,” Vance says. “They will clean up their beach and put it into a convenient pile for us to come by in a pontoon or one of our volunteers to pick up. It really is an efficient way to clean up a large lake.”
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Josh Friedrich, real estate representative, Lake of the Ozarks Shoreline Management, AmerenUE, uses a pitchfork to corral a large piece of Styrofoam.
Josh Friedrich, real estate representative, Lake of the Ozarks Shoreline Management, left, and Doug Brown, managing supervisor, Real Estate, carry an eight-foot section of Styrofoam into a dumpster.
The pontoon boat on the left, captained by Bryan Vance, field coordinator, Lake of the Ozarks Shoreline Management, returns after unloading debris in a dumpster, while the pontoon on the right, captained by Jeff Green, heads to the dumpster with a load of debris.
Mark Jordan and Josh Friedrich carry two pieces of Styrofoam to the dumpster. In the background is Doug Brown.
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