LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – As a followup to its article in the Nov. 17 edition describing the program of fishing line recycle stations around Clear Lake, Lake County News has obtained information on how this program operates statewide.

The local stations are receptacles that serve the purpose of keeping discarded fishing line out of the lake, and the 17 stations were placed and are maintained by the Redbud Audubon Society in Lake County.

At the state level, the California Coastal Commission and the Division of Boating and Waters conduct the fishing line recycling program with support from the BoatUS Foundation.

Since its launch in 2009 a total of 118 monofilament fishing line recycling stations have been placed throughout California, according to Vivian Matuk, who coordinates the program for the California Coastal Commission.

The specific locations for all of these stations can be found in an online map that can be seen above or accessed at http://goo.gl/maps/5zF5F .

Discarded fishing line collected in Lake County by Robert Patton, who operates the program locally, with the aid of the Lake County Sea Scouts, will be sent to the Coastal Commission, which, in turn, sends it to Berkley Conservation Institute in Spirit Lake, Iowa for proper recycling into park benches and other products.

Matuk said that in the four years the program has functioned in California approximately 859 pounds of fishing line have been collected and properly recycled.

She added that, stretched out, this line would stretch from San Francisco to Rocky Ford, Oklahoma.

Email John Lindblom at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .