REGION: Beach cleanups produce huge haul
Ruth Marvin Webster
North County Times
05/09/2010
Bimonthly coastal cleanup events have yielded roughly 12,000 pounds of trash from the county's beaches over the past year ---- a massive six tons of debris that would have otherwise found its way into the Pacific Ocean, says Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper.
Officials with Coastkeeper and with the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation are hoping their combined and continuing effort to stem the rising tide of trash will be just as successful in the future.
The groups' next North County cleanup event is set for May 15 at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. The events are free and open to the public.
Leucadia residents Jan and Bill Rogers have served as beach cleanup site captains at Beacon's Beach in Encinitas for at least eight years.
They set up a booth, hand out bags, gloves and water to volunteers, and weigh and tally the amount of trash collected.
Jan Rogers said that the beach is simply immaculate when the volunteers have finished their cleanup.
"The surfers always say thank you (to us)," she said. "The high school kids get three volunteer hours. And being on the beach is not a bad way to spend a day."
Rogers said she is pleased that many of their volunteers are families.
"The kids are the big thing," she said. "It (beach cleanup events) makes them conscious of the importance of not littering and that trash from the streets go down to the beach."
Encinitas Clean Water Program Manager Erik Steenblock said that beach cleanup events not only help remove pollution and debris from local beaches, they do a great deal to raise public awareness.
"Not only are these cleanups an amenity to the community," said Steenblock "but they go a long way to putting the message of personal responsibility out there. Even small changes in behavior can have a big effect on our water and our beaches."
Still, Rogers said , North County beaches are not nearly as littered as the ones further south in San Diego.
"It is startling what they find there, say around Mission Bay," Rogers said.
The strangest thing Rogers said she once found at Beacon's was a Led Zeppelin album broken in half. She said the items that sadden her the most are the countless cigarette butts.
Indeed, the number of cigarette butts collected at beach cleanups around the county increased nearly 10,000 last year to a total of 50,000, said Bill Hickman, Surfrider Foundation San Diego Chapter coordinator
Many people improperly dispose of plastic items such as cigarettes without realizing the harm they are doing to the environment, he said, adding that, "Plastics never biodegrade, so they have a lasting negative impact on our beaches and the health of the Pacific Ocean ecosystem."
San Diego Coastkeeper said volunteers removed more than 109,404 pieces of plastic, including 12,126 pieces of Styrofoam last year.
