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. • S

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