Post-holiday Lake Minnetonka garbage pickup is getting easier, volunteers say

Maybe rain the morning of July 4th kept people away. Maybe high gas prices are limiting boating trips. Maybe the rebound from COVID-19 has opened other entertainment options. Maybe it's because the holiday landed on a Monday.

Or maybe people are just becoming more environmentally responsible.

Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, there was a lot less garbage than usual along the shoreline of Big Island in Lake Minnetonka after this year's July 4th festivities. A group of volunteers who go out every July 5 to pick up trash left behind by holiday partiers said that, in recent years, including this one, their job has become much easier.

Seven people who spent about an hour wading through waist-deep water on the hard-partying side of Big Island needed only two 55-gallon trash bags to remove the garbage — and the bags were only half full.

In years past, the post-holiday group could fill 30 to 40 bags to the brim, said marina owner and lake environmental activist Gabriel Jabbour of Orono, who started the post-holiday trash pickup on his own about 20 years ago and now leads the annual expedition.

"We used to have quite a pileup," said Jabbour, who sped the cleanup crew to the site on a 58-foot boat. But in recent years, "little by little, it's not as necessary."

"I think this means people are doing a better job" of picking up after themselves, said Eric Evenson, executive director of the Lake Minnetonka Association, an organization of lakeshore property owners. The association and people from Life's a Beach Shoreline Services, a shoreline maintenance company, performed the cleanup.

Looking down through the water, the lake floor looked pretty clean. In past years, it has been festooned with cans and bottles and other objects, as shown in a post on Jabbour's Tonka Bay Marina Facebook page.

The island's big party site is called Cruisers Cove, an area on the shore where each year hundreds of tied-together boats cram in together for an all-day holiday shindig notorious for its carefree debauchery.

In 2019, nearly 200 people reported getting sick after partying there on a long July 4th weekend. (Hennepin County Public Health was not able to determine the cause, but many suspected a boat owner had emptied the vessel's wastewater holding tank in the area.)

But this year's holiday was much quieter, observers agreed.

"Normal year has hundreds of boats that tie up in flotillas," said David Cofman of Plymouth, replying to a question on a Lake Minnetonka Facebook page. "Particularly late teens and early 20-year-olds who gather to party on the southern side. That crowd was considerably absent. This year I would estimate there were under a hundred boats by Big Island."

Keegan Shoutz, who operates a Lake Minnetonka Facebook page and lives in Spring Park, agreed it was a quiet scene. "We were out on the far right side of the typical crowds and [it] was fairly subdued. A lot of kids and families, which was a welcome change to years past."

Wells Brose of Mound said it was the smallest July 4th he'd seen in 16 years of going out to Big Island. "Couple hundred boats [this year]. Oh yeah, the crowd was very tame! Only one pocket of wildness!"

Meanwhile, this summer's lake water quality has been mostly cooperating. Not far from Big Island, the beach at the Excelsior Commons was closed on June 21 due to high E.coli, an organism that may not be harmful in itself but indicates the likelihood of contamination by human or animal waste, said Allison Thrash, communications manager for Hennepin County Public Health. There've been seven Hennepin County beach closures this summer, but currently all beaches are open.

Also helping is that residents of Big Island have formed a sort of "neighborhood watch" to keep the area clear of debris, said Jabbour, who has made numerous efforts to protect the lake's water quality (and been recognized for them by entities including the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center, the Department of Natural Resources and former Gov. Mark Dayton, who declared Aug. 11, 2017, "Gabriel Jabbour Day").

But most agreed that some credit for the relatively tidy shoreline goes to the partiers themselves. Lake users, they said, are becoming more careful to avoid littering and more conscious of their responsibility to the planet.

Josh Leddy, owner of Life's a Beach, as well as Back Channel Brewing Co. in Spring Park, noted that lake litter can be a breeding ground for invasive zebra mussels. Some years ago, people never really talked about picking up trash, said Leddy, who's been helping with the cleanup for about a decade.

"Now everybody owns this a lot better," he said. "People want to be stewards of the lake themselves — not just leave it up to others."

Tom Frahm, president of the Lake Minnetonka Association, agreed that people have been more conscientious about protecting the lake's quality.

"I think people are just more aware of this natural resource," he said, gazing out over water sparkling in the midday sun. "It's very, very special."