While she was on her early-morning patrol of Wrightsville’s beach strand Monday, Sept. 1, Wrightsville Beach Sea Turtle Project coordinator Nancy Fahey discovered the aftermath of a busy holiday weekend.
“It was horrible,” Fahey said. “It was like a trash bomb had been dropped between Johnnie Mercer’s Pier and Stone Street. There was trash, chairs that had been left behind, broken boogie boards and Styrofoam coolers filled to the brim with trash.”
Fahey said she was stricken by the amount of trash on the beach while the beach trash cans were empty. Recalling when Wrightsville Beach had more of an issue with littering, Fahey said she thought progress had been made in lessening litter on the beach with initiatives like the Cleaner Greener Ad Hoc Advisory Committee and the Beach Ambassadors.
The Beach Ambassadors program, not included in the Town of Wrightsville Beach’s budget for Fiscal Year 2014-15, was not on duty this summer season.
“We used to have a really bad problem with people littering and leaving trash behind and I felt like the town took steps to remedy the situation and we definitely saw an improvement,” Fahey said. “Frankly, what I saw yesterday morning indicated a step backward in what has been accomplished in recent years.”
Public safety and law enforcement officials said Sunday’s crowds were the largest of the Labor Day holiday weekend and Wrightsville Beach Town Manager Tim Owens said town sanitation crews made three passes along the beach strand throughout the weekend to clear the trash cans.
After seeing the amount of litter on the beach Fahey called volunteer Ginger Taylor to arrange a beach sweep for Monday evening.
From 6-7 p.m., volunteers with Wrightsville Beach Sea Turtle Project picked up 43 bags of trash from the entire beach strand, in addition to the 12 bags of trash collected by Fahey and two other volunteers earlier in the day. The size of each trash bag collected was equivalent to the size of a plastic grocery bag, Taylor said.
In addition to the variety of plastics and trash found on the beach, Taylor said she also noticed a spike in the amount of cigarette butts on the beach.
“There are so many cigarette butts again and that is disheartening because we are a nonsmoking beach,” Taylor said. “We saw a reduction when the ban was passed but the number of butts on the beach now is incredible.”
Fahey could not compare Monday’s litter to the amount of trash left on the beach during the past two summer holiday weekends but said something should be done to address the growing issue.
“We have got to find a way to convince people it is not OK to get up and leave their trash behind on the beach,” Fahey said. “The sanitation department guys can’t clean all that up. I think we may need to go back to the [Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen] again to try and figure out a solution.”
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