It’s been 10 years since scuba divers Seth Jones and Monique Rydel-Fortner first spotted the abandoned cables in the depths of Lake Tahoe while diving in Emerald Bay. Jones, founder of Below the Blue, a nonprofit aimed at removing foreign debris from bodies of water, took a piece of the cable — a copper wire coated in lead — to be examined and he determined that it was likely leaching lead into the lake, possibly contaminating a vital water source.

A lawsuit settlement from last fall called for the immediate removal of the cables, yet as of press time, the cables remain in the lake.

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