"Keep The Beach Clean" - 5 new articles
Video from WMBB - Tent City on the Beach Panama City Beach Trash, July 4, 2009
 PCB Taking Some Trash Action!The Panama City Beach City Council approved tougher city ordinances all the time, not just in a 24 hour period. If enforced, this could be a big, big boost to keeping Panama City Beach clean. A big round of kudos to Mayor Oberst, Council members and the Tourist Development Council Board on making this happen.
I will keep an eye on the private beaches that now must be kept clean, watching to see if this is law is enforced. Just as importantly, I'll be watching to see if the city and the TDC keep up their end of the deal and keep the PUBLIC beaches clean at all times. That's only fair, right? I would love any volunteers who regularly walk the beach to submit photos to this blog, documenting the success or failure of this new effort. Let me know if you would like to participate. Read about the new laws and the process behind it at http://pcbdaily.com/?p=3840 and at http://www.newsherald.com/news/beach_72928___article.html/trash_city.html  Ideas Abound; Solutions Do Not
I went out to the beach last week to hand out trash bags. As the alternative break students observed last week, and I stated in 2006, and other students suggested in 2008, and the TDC says they're "investigating" in 2009, the idea of providing trash bags to visitors on the beach is a pretty common-sense approach to keeping the beach clean.
Other ideas are in the papers, on the news and in blogs: Put out recycle bins. Make law-breakers clean it up as community service. Enforce the litter laws to begin with. Fine businesses who do not follow code on their beach.
All these ideas are fine, but none are being executed. Just "investigated."
While I applaud the TDC's decision to emphasize clean beaches as a part of their strategic plan, they have not come close to acting on real, preventative solutions. Nor have they considered improving the method of how they clean the beaches now. 
The current process includes running tractors and surf rakes up and down the beach. It costs $700K per year now, and that's not enough money to do it properly this way.
If you're going to "groom" the beaches once a week, that means 6 days of the week during peak seasons will have too much litter in the most popular public spaces.
"Grooming" the beach also has proven to bury the top layer of fine sand, and till up the coarser sand. What's more, the surf rake buries glass bottles instead of raking them up.
And here's a fun question for bed tax collectors: Why are you about to spend millions of dollars to retrofit "turtle-friendly" lighting while these John Deere tractors will be racing up and down your beaches, surely crushing any little turtle eggs under the sand?  A Spring Breaker's Report(Submitted by Kevin D. McKenna, MTU Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate) Some of these photos demonstrate that some of the companies with stands are not only responsible for some of the mess, but some are relying solely upon the blue barrels for their operations.
Monster was handing out free drinks, and the empty cases piled up. Star Trek the Movie was giving out tens of dozens of pizzas by the slice. All the plates went somewhere. 
The floor in front of the lil Wayne concert was gross. The picture attached is actually probably the cleanest section but I included that photo because of the glass.
(Jason, Sten and Kevin - Michigan Tech Alternative Spring Breakers 2009) 
These students used the free trash bags provided by GetAwaytotheGulf.com to keep their area of the beach clean!  More Recent Articles |
