Garda Lake Cleanup: Divers, Officials and Kids Tackle Pollution

A day dedicated to cleaning up the seabeds and beaches to raise awareness among residents of Garda about respecting and protecting the lake environment. The environmental protection event, organized last Sunday by Explorer Sub of Verona, on the northern shores of the town, was quite successful. Approximately seventy volunteers gathered to collect both litter abandoned on the beaches and debris thrown into Lake Garda’s waters. Equipped with a support boat and supported by an ambulance from Croce Bianca of Torri, which remained at Baia dei Pini for the entire duration of the event, the divers and the inexperienced “cleaners” from land managed to gather a significant number of objects of various kinds. Nylon sacks and pieces of boats, plastic shoes, bottles, tires, car batteries, up to a boat tank still filled with gasoline — all was recovered and piled on the beach to be later disposed of in appropriate containers. The event was also attended by the mayor of Torri, Alberto Vedovelli, who greeted the divers and expressed his “thanks for the valuable environmental safeguarding activities carried out over the past few years.” Furthermore, the mayor praised the initiative involving waste collection, which engaged and involved the children from Torri’s elementary schools. “Today,” explained diving instructor Silvia Mombello, “we have about forty children here, for whom a treasure hunt on the beach was organized. In recent days, we visited their school and left a flyer explaining the purpose of today’s event. Environmental awareness must, in fact, start at a very young age.” The day continued with a lunch at the Baia Stanca kiosk, facing one of the three dive sites used by the divers, located between Baia dei Pini and the monument to the fallen. Among the divers participating in the cleanup was also regional councilor for public works and civil protection Massimo Giorgetti. Early in the morning, the politician boarded a speedboat in Bardolino and, after stopping at Pacengo, where local Civil Protection volunteers were engaged in a similar Garda cleaning initiative, he arrived directly at Baia dei Pini wearing wetsuit, mask, and fins over his shoulder. After a while, he reached the shore carrying a piece of hull fetched from underwater. The event with the divers was also an occasion for the regional councilor to reaffirm the intention to amend the interregional law regulating diving activities on Lake Garda. In recent days, Giorgetti had written to the president of the Regional Executive and to the president of the Trento Provincial Council, requesting the adoption of the law already approved by Veneto in 1989 and Lombardy in 1994. This law allows for the elimination of the support boat used by Garda divers, as it already happens for those diving in marine waters.