AUSTIN (KXAN) — Trash, litter, and other debris piling up in Austin’s waterways isn’t a new phenomenon. A waterway cleanup effort that is a first for the city, though, is sending divers beneath the service to pull e-scooters out of the water.
The Austin Police Department Lake Patrol and Dive Team took to Lady Bird Lake on Tuesday to recover scooters, like Birds and Limes, that somehow wound up in the lake.
According to APD bomb squad and dive team Sgt. Issa Kafena, divers searched beneath the surface of Lady Bird Lake for scooters based on GPS tracking information from the scooters’ parent companies.
Once divers located the scooters, they would tag them and send a buoy to the surface to mark their locations, and then the scooters were pulled up out of the water, Kafena explained.
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Scooters removed from Lady Bird Lake, by APD Dive Team Search and Rescue (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez) -
Scooters removed from Lady Bird Lake, by APD Dive Team Search and Rescue (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez) -
Scooters removed from Lady Bird Lake, by APD Dive Team Search and Rescue (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez) -
Scooters removed from Lady Bird Lake, by APD Dive Team Search and Rescue (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez) -
Scooters removed from Lady Bird Lake, by APD Dive Team Search and Rescue (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez) -
Scooters removed from Lady Bird Lake, by APD Dive Team Search and Rescue (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez)
The divers were out in the water under and near the MoPac Expressway bridge on Tuesday morning for a few hours and recovered 20 scooters from the water.
Kafena said this was the first time the dive team recovered something like scooters, but that if there were good results from the effort and there’s a future need, they’d come back to recover more.
“Recently, our team got some new equipment, new dive suits, and we kind of wanted to just give back to the community by cleaning up some of the scooters that have been dumped in Lady Bird Lake,” Kafena said.
He said there are likely “dozens” of scooters in the lake. He said they pose a risk not only to the environment, but also to anyone using the lake, recreationally, and for things like search and rescue.
“It is extremely hazardous to the environment and for anybody who might be using the water, even though you’re not supposed to be swimming in it, having all those obstacles under the water is very, very dangerous.”
“This is the most dangerous job we do, and so we don’t want to overextend where we shouldn’t overextend, but we will do what we can to do the best job we can and come back if we need to,” Kafena added.
Kafena said a representative from Bird scooters would likely come take the scooters from the dive team in the near future.
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