Two clean up days this year
By Kathy Greer
The summer months bring thousands of visitors to the South Beach each year. The abundance of visitors over such a short time span creates a major challenge for State Parks and local agencies in cleaning up our beaches after beachgoers head home. Add fireworks and Fourth of July beach parties and bonfires to the picture, and the challenge to keep the beaches clean becomes an even greater burden to resident agencies.
July 5th cleanup
For the past two years, a small but enthusiastic group of South Beach residents have come together to help remove hundreds of pounds of post-Fourth debris from the shoreline along Half Moon Bay, Westhaven State Park, and south along the beach to the Grays Harbor Lighthouse. This year’s clean up crew included local volunteers Brady Engvall, Heidi Happonen, Arthur Grunbaum, Kaare Hammer and Kathy Greer. With trash bags and disposal courtesy of Washington State Parks, the group met on the morning of July 5th at Westhaven State Park and spend over two hours sweeping both Half Moon Bay and the South Jetty beaches of nearly 500 pounds of trash. A majority was spent fireworks but there were also plenty of aluminum cans, bottles and food containers found near smoldering bonfires, along the high tide line & in dunes.
Half Moon Bay is always the hardest hit, more than likely due to its easy access by car and the fact that it lies just outside Park boundaries, where fireworks are prohibited. In addition to the Monday Westport fireworks cleanup effort, there was word of dozens of dedicated Grayland residents who took on areas further south on the same day where the impact exceeds that of Westport’s due in large part again to vehicle accessibility and in this case, to over 15 more miles of beach gathering spots.
CoastSavers cleanup
In its third year, CoastSavers & Washington State Parks sponsored a beach cleanup last Saturday, July 10th, a the Twin Harbors State Park beach approach at Schafer Road. That effort also welcomed aboard this year the added sponsorship of Ocean Companies, which provided cleanup materials, a free barbecue lunch for volunteers and outreach materials related to the importance of maintaining the health of our beaches and ocean waters.
The event drew nearly 100 volunteers from all over Grays Harbor that included not only individuals and Ocean Company employees, but also a Boy Scout troop, conservation group representatives, and members of a local church. Folks arrived bright and early to disburse north and south along the beach.
In all, over ten cubic yards of debris was collected, including fireworks, rope, beverage bottles and plastic containers.
Volunteers this year discussed the hope that by next year a much larger combined effort can be organized to cover all of the South Beach from Westport to the county line and to have more emphasis on the days surrounding the Fourth.
A great model for a larger scale community clean up effort is Pacific County’s Grass Roots Garbage Gang, which since 2001 has held three clean ups a year, including one on July 5th, which continues to draw over 500 volunteers and remove over 18 tons of trash off the Long Beach peninsula in one day.
To learn more about getting involved in future beach clean ups or organizing one yourself, visit http://coastsavers.org or email kgreer@surfrider.org.
Westport resident Kathy Greer is Chair of the Grays Harbor County Marine Resources Committee and works for the Surfrider Foundation as their Washington Coastal Projects Coordinator
