INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – There is much in the Incline Village region that reminds Madonna Dunbar of the serendipity that’s brought her to where she’s at now as the Resource Conservationist at Incline Village Improvement District Waste Not Programs and Executive Director of Tahoe Water Suppliers Association.

“I think of that when I pull into work,” she says, explaining the first night she slept in Incline Village was just one turn from her current office about 500 yards away.

It all started in August 1998 while traveling the country in a bus with her husband, Pablo (Tenzin) Ortega, stopping at national parks and doing seasonal work.

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“Then we landed in Tahoe, thinking we were just going to do another part of the season,” Dunbar recalls. Fast forward two and half decades, “And here I am 25 years later, like a lot of people, embraced by Tahoe.”

“It wanted us to be here,” she says.

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Within those two and a half decades is a long list of environmental preservation and stewardship initiatives she’s championed, earning her the Golden Pinecone Sustainability Award’s first ever Lifetime Achievement Award on Oct. 10.

“Her list of advocacy and environmental activism for Lake Tahoe goes on and on and on,” Donna Walden with GreenUp says, one of the award event’s hosts.

Madonna has been in her role at IVGID and TSWA for more than 17 years.

In those years, Dunbar has spearheaded the well-known Drink Tahoe Tap campaign that has not only informed on Tahoe’s award winning water quality, but also made drinking Tahoe tap trendy. It’s estimated the campaign voided the use of millions of plastic water bottles by offering refillable options. Through the trademarked campaign, 75,000 refillable water bottles have been distributed over 15 years. The campaign has distributed approximately 180,000 Drink Tahoe Tap stickers, spreading the word.

The traction the campaign has gained has led to water bottle bans in other jurisdictions around the lake, like South Lake Tahoe and Truckee. “I’m really pleased how much partnership and cohesiveness has come around something as simple as Drink Tahoe Tap,” she says.

That hasn’t been the only campaign she’s been behind. Others are the No Butts on the Beach, Take Care and Dog Waste Awareness campaigns, often partnering with the Tahoe Fund and sharing slogans.

While under Dunbar’s care, IVGID’s Waste Not Program has joined the Nevada Green Business Program, received a STOKE certification for Diamond Peak, implemented Public Works sustainability benchmarking and reporting, the Bear Smart Incline Village Program, and the Zero Waste event project.

She has been involved in raising over $30,000 for the Tahoe Resource Conservation District’s purchase of bottom barrier mats for aquatic invasive species control as well as fundraising for Clean Up The Lake.

Additionally she’s invested in Tahoe’s future by organizing scholarships for local high school seniors who wish to enter the field of natural resource protection or the water industry.

She’s also implemented single-stream recycling, built a fleet of community-accessible potable water stations and has given a voice to wildlife in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

“Enthusiasm has definitely been one of my characteristics,” she says “to help accomplish all this work.”

Dunbar has been involved in planning regional Earth Day celebrations and has provided educational booths at both Tahoe Truckee’s and South Lake Tahoe’s annual event.

“Madonna strives as an educator to simplify complex environmental issues,” Walden says, “making them accessible to people from all walks of life. Her goal is to be informative but also inspire, so community members are motivated to make changes in their own lives and communities.”

The Golden Pinecone adds to the many awards her and her team have already received at both the national and regional level.

“I’ve had a great team,” she says, “It’s not just me at all.” Her team, along with a receptive community who loves the lake and environment, has made her efforts an honor.

“There’s a unification behind Lake Tahoe that I think is one of the most amazing things of it all. People really love this lake,” she explains, “And I’m just one of those people too.”

This is all in her tenure with the Waste Not program and affiliated Tahoe Water Suppliers Association.

Much of her earlier environmental work came by happenstance. “It just came down to seeing where there’s a problem and wanting to offer a solution.”

She recalls that while traveling by bus with her husband and waiting tables in national parks, there wouldn’t be recycling. “So I would always at least work with the vendor and the park and try to get the cardboard back to town.”

This led to her implementing numerous recycling programs across the nation, including in New Mexico, Colorado, and Oregon. One of these was a pilot project for Santa Fe Recycles, offering local businesses commercial volume recycling collection. 

It was this seasonal work, traveling from park to park that brought Madonna and her husband to Incline Village.

Having a background in photography, with a masters in Fine Arts, she started working as a landscape photography teacher at Sierra Nevada College, now University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe, and eventually became the director of student activities. “And then, like I had done at the restaurants, I’m working at this college and the recycling needed help,” she says, “and so I just sort of made it happen.”

She created the recycling program at Sierra Nevada College, reducing campus waste by approximately 50%.

“My brother the other day said, ‘you know, you just made a career out of doing what you always did.'”

Her establishment of SNC’s recycling program gave her familiarity with IVGID’s Waste Not program, which she has now ran since 2007.

When asked if she knew from the start whether she wanted to be a resource conservationist, she said, “Heck no, I don’t even know what that title still means, really,” and explained, “you know, one passion led to the other.”

She followed those passions to her current role. “Sometimes the universe really knows what it wants you to do. Cause I didn’t plan it.”

When IVGID was hiring for the position she now holds, she says they were hiring for a scientist. Having minored in chemistry, she gave it a go. “What they really needed was somebody with a big mouth, a lot of passion, a science background and a passion for educating and motivating.”

From photographer, to waitress traveling the country, to recycle manager, to teacher, and all the hats she’s worn, she says, “I think part of my success here is because I did not just come up through just one field.”

She believes her success here is partly due to the assortment of experiences she’s had.

“Having all those pieces is giving me a really cool, interesting background to be able to put a lot of pieces together.” She says that’s why the programs she runs touches around 33 basin topics, including hazardous waste, bears, dog poop, landscape irrigation and microplastics research to name a few.

She describes herself as a “A tree hugger [that] snuck into government.”

Dunbar plans on retiring, what she calls re-wirement, at the end of October, shortly after receiving her Golden Pinecone. “I bought a van, an old Chinook van and I’m going to go re-embrace my rolling roots a little bit.” They are the rolling roots that led her and her husband here over 25 years ago.

“We used to joke, the world pooped rainbows on us,” she says, “And you know, other than him dying, that was pretty much such a blessed life.”

Her husband, Pablo (Tenzin) Ortega, passed away unexpectedly two and half years ago, shortly after retiring.

“You know, change is hard, but it comes at you whether you want it or not.”

Although she plans on keeping her Tahoe roots, she says she needs to paint the picture differently for a while.

“The loss of a partner so quickly, so unexpected[ly], will just leave you reeling like it’s an altered universe,” she says, “Tahoe has become an altered universe for me because our world was here.”

One of the strengths getting her through grief has been looking back and remembering she had none of it figured out before. “And the universe supported the whole way,” she says, “I have to remain, ‘Hey, it worked out before. It’s always worked out pretty much.'”

Just because she’s retiring doesn’t mean her fervor for the environment will relax, “I’m sure I’m going to be distraught over the garbage on the side of the road.”

“I’m just going to take what I do here,” she says, “out there.”

As she takes her activism on the road, Dunbar is looking forward to the people she will meet and the places she will see.

“I just want to be a badass old lady. So I’m going to go do that, I guess.”