Crews pleased to find less trash on beaches
Mike Lee
San Diego Union-Tribune
07/05/2010
By the dawn’s early light, post-party volunteers and seaside residents looked across San Diego County beaches on Monday morning and saw something both pleasant and unfamiliar: less mess.
After years of public outreach and morning-after July Fourth cleanups, some beach advocates think messages about caring for the coast have combined with the beach booze ban to make a noticeable difference. Others said they just got lucky this year because the weather on Independence Day was cool and cloudy, making for light crowds at some spots.
“I came out this morning to walk the dog and I was shocked” by the clean sand, said Michelle Provence of Pacific Beach.
Whatever the reasons, workers who showed up near her home at 8 a.m. had minimal amounts of big trash to haul away and spent their time targeting cigarette butts, bottle tops and plastic wrappers.
“We are asking the volunteers to sweat the small stuff,” said Bill Hickman, who helped organize the seventh annual Morning After Mess garbage collection project for the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.
He’s not sure that one light year means an end to the litter problems, but he’d like to think a new environmental ethic is taking hold.
“We don’t really want to host beach cleanups,” Hickman said. “I’d rather sleep in on the fifth of July, but until we have got a consistently clean beach we are going to be out here helping to protect ... some of the marine life that is out there.”
The need for trash collection also aggravates Provence, who said she removes debris from the water’s edge on daily walks. She and some other residents near Sail Bay have been fearing a return of the floating party known as Floatopia, which they said left mounds of trash after an event earlier this year.
When Provence saw Surfrider’s booth on Monday morning, she pulled on a bright pink work glove and borrowed a mechanical grabber from event organizers to pick up whatever tidbits she could find.
