Tales from the Logbook--DeLong Lake Cleanup

 

Anchorage, Alaska features a number of municipal parks with freshwater lakes.  Every year in May, once the winter snow has receded, a city-wide cleanup removes the litter detritus of winter along the streets and trails.  Later that month the annual Creek Cleanup does the same for the city’s urban streams.  No equivalent organized effort exists for the lakes.

In May 2009, at the behest of the Municipal Parks and Recreation Department, Jerry and Lisa Vandergriff organized a handful of divers to remove debris from DeLong Lake near Anchorage International Airport.  The dive was an effort to show that the problem of litter in the environment did not end at water’s edge. 

On Sunday, May 10, 2009, Mother’s Day, the divers assembled on the dock at DeLong Lake at 9 am. (The dock's location is indicated by the star on the map.) The winter ice had recently cleared from the 20 acre lake surface, but the water would still be a chilly 45 degrees F.  The poor visibility at the bottom of the lake, 0 to 5 feet, meant that only very experienced divers were taking part in this “muck dive.” We donned our drysuits and tanks, grabbed our mesh goody bags to bring up whatever we found that did not belong on the bottom and entered the water.

Each diver attempted to swim in a different direction following a compass heading to cover as much as the lake as possible.  I dropped to the bottom and started swimming vaguely aware of a nearby diver on a divergent course. 

The bottom was covered in a layer of decaying organic matter from leaves and tree limbs.  I stuck my hand in the layer and was up to my elbow in the muck without finding a hard bottom.  I did not find this surprising as they are the same conditions I encountered at the nearby Little Campbell Lake.  Hovering just above the layer, I swam along a compass course as a reference in the low horizontal visibility.  

I came across scattered piles of beer cans, bottles, and other debris.  The sites seemed to be randomly scattered with no discernable pattern.  I placed the debris and my mesh bag and moved along.  Upon using half my air supply, I turned to the left, swam about 25 feet and swam a reverse compass course inbound toward the dock.  The entire dive lasted about 45 minutes with a maximum depth of 16 feet.  The deepest part of the lake is reported to be about 22 feet.

Back on the dock, I emptied a half-full goody bag, separating the mostly recyclable aluminum from the disposable trash.  Jerry explained that the scattered piles of beer cans most likely marked the sites of ice fishing huts set up on the lake during the winter.  The fishermen disposed of their cans down the hole.

While I did see river otter and muskrat around the lake, I had no encounters underwater.  Of course, with the barely-able-to-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face visibility, the critters could have been putting on an underwater show nearby and I would not have seen it.  Nor did I see any of the fish that are stocked in the lake which include arctic char, salmon, and trout.

I have participated in a couple of water body cleanups over the years.  DeLong Lake is probably one of the more challenging ones.