Lake Pleasant Gyre

The Gyre, a plastic littered site in the middle of the ocean, inspired me to promise to consume 10 pounds less plastic this year. The Gyre is so out of sight, it is so easy to ignore, it is so simple to forget and not care about. This weekend, as I walked to the marina at Lake Pleasant, I took this photo of a local mini-gyre. The environmental disgrace is so near my home I have to take it personally.

Spring winds have whipped Lake Pleasant and it rained several days ago. The lake’s water level has risen to capacity. This combination pushes floating material windward into compacted surface mats, mostly along Pleasant’s shorelines. These mats are for the greater part brown mulchy organic material; dead leaves, swollen twigs and rotting cacti with still-dangerous barbs. The sad fact is the organic matter is punctuated with plastic; bottles, wrappers, even flip-flops.

Like in the Oceanic Gyre a percentage of the trash surely comes from careless boaters and fishermen. It’s probable though, the bulk of it is from places up stream or up wind from Lake Pleasant. The plastic bags bogged in the mess probably flew in maybe from my community. I have watched bags, moving pillows of plastic and air, soaring higher and higher, finally becoming tiny white glints transversing the clear desert sky. They are bound for wherever the wind blows. It is likely the fast food packaging trapped in the bog was swept by the rain from the streets, into the washes, into the Agua Fría and finally into the Lake Pleasant gyre.

I see a wild array of plastic when I venture into the desert near my home. Bottles of every plastic sort litter trails — beach balls snag and deflate in cacti, pool toys entangle in green palo verdi. During frequent outdoor ventures I often carry home small, once-used plastic items. I jog past bulkier, multi-use items too big to lug home for recycling or proper disposal. I imagine the half buried plastic bucket I run past to be a cozy home for rattlesnakes. The broken plastic filing box must be infested with scorpions. Other poisonous critters surely seek a spot protected from the harsh dry landscape under the damaged plastic slide. It is so common it looks natural. When the flash floods scour the area, many of these desert-discards dislodge and bob towards Lake Pleasant. When summer reservoir water releases begin to irrigate crops downstream, the trash could continue towards Mexico. Perhaps a portion of the mess finally settles into one of the massive oceanic Gyres. Regardless of where it ends its journey, none of us are immune from the responsibility for the mess.

Spending the morning at Pleasant Harbor Marina, I witnessed a mountain of water bottles accumulate, casually tossed into the garbage, some with water still glistening inside. Within a few minutes of my arrival a worker emptied the fifty gallon plastic garbage can, pulling a large plastic bag to dispose of dozens of plastic water bottles. I saved a few ounces of plastic consumption that day by bringing a metal thermos, asking the bartender to fill it a few times and drinking from the fountain. I’ll give myself a three ounce credit. Still, I know I am not blameless for the mess I passed in the water, the water we Phoenicians eventually drink.

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