San Marcos River faces threat from vape pens
Need a nicotine fix? The San Marcos River doesn’t, but it’s getting it anyway.
River cleanup crews have pulled 204 vape pens from the river in 2022 alone, accounting for a significant chunk of the human-made litter that is dug out from the riverbed and untangled from plants.
The number is startling and is representative of changes in the types of litter that cleanup crews pick up over the years, said Zach Halfin, the board president of the nonprofit Eyes of the San Marcos River.
“It used to be cigarette butts and cigarette packaging,” Halfin said, adding that vape pens have taken over as the nicotine receptacle of choice for revelers who like to stuff themselves in tubes and float down a 2-mile stretch of the 15-mile river during the warmer months.
The No. 1 litter item pulled from the river — booze containers — has remained the same, al
though the most popular libation has changed.
When Halfin first started cleaning the river in 2018, “it was all Keystone Light and super cheap, light beers,” and then it transitioned to seltzers and canned wines.
“Things have changed, certainly, in the last two to three years,” he said.
Paula Sandridge Goynes and her husband own a church camp property along the San Marcos River. They’ve been there since 1972, although their section of the river didn’t see tubers until around 2002.
Since then, they have been contributing to the river cleanup effort. Their grandkids do a lot of diving in the river in front of their property, and they often will come up with heaps of trash themselves.
Goynes said they find an assortment of things: sunglasses, hats, clothing, shoes, umbrellas and even several rosary beads over the years.
“Anything a tuber would have, it ends up in the river,” she said.
Cell phones are also a popular
item for litter brigades to find scattered throughout the river. A cottage industry has sprung up for people who traverse the river early in the mornings after busy weekends, find discarded cellphones and sell the parts for money, Halfin said.
While all the trash is worrisome because it is bad for the environment, the vape pens in particular are bad not just because of their plastic component, but also because the chemicals and ingredients inside the pens can be dangerous for fish, salamanders and other wildlife that call the river home.
“The batteries are made with heavy metals — lithium is in a lot of them — and the nicotine juice itself is a toxin for fish,” Halfin said.
Both Halfin and Gonyes have called on the companies that rent tubes to people to be more proactive about protecting the environment and keeping trash out of the river, but they say their efforts so far have fallen on deaf ears.
The 2-mile stretch of river popular with tubers can see up to 3,000 or 4,000 people per day during the busy summer months.
“A lot of people aren’t losing their stuff on purpose, but they’re poorly equipped by some of the commercial outfitters down there,” he said. “I think the guys down there need to do a better job, because otherwise the litter is just going to continue getting worse.”