Save the Beaches
Saturday is International Coastal Cleanup Day, and East Hampton Town is joining the effort by providing trash bags, gloves, and collection sites for volunteers who want to help pick up trash from the beaches. Then, on Sunday, the organizers of the People’s Climate March expect it to be the largest demonstration in New York City since the anti-Vietnam War protests. Both are worthy.
The People’s Climate March promises to involve leaders from the labor movement, faith-based organizations, and people from across the nation, along with 32 marching bands and a single call by trumpets, bells, drums, and whistles for change. The beach cleanup here, sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, may present an opportunity for change of the sometimes overlooked but growing problem of the mess left behind by bonfires. East Hampton Village allows fires on the beach provided they are kept inside a metal brazier or other container. Southampton does the same, and requires a permit. Many other Long Island municipalities ban them altogether. East Hampton Town, on the other hand, allows fires to be built right on the sand, subject to a host of regulations about size, location, and hours, which are largely ignored and in any event fail to address the enduring problem that fire debris, be it half-burned logs or the more-difficult-to-remove bits of charcoal, are leaving many popular bathing beaches almost permanently scarred.
If you look closely (and we invite you to), dozens of small, black chunks can be picked up within an area no bigger than a single beach towel at Indian Wells in Amagansett. Downtown Montauk’s shore one morning this summer was a wasteland of smoldering wood and empty beer cans. It’s time for town officials to realize something has to change. Fires on town beaches could be permitted only within metal containers for a distance of perhaps 300 feet in either direction from beach road ends. Fires could be allowed on the sand beyond those limits, but only if a way can be found for marine patrol officers to obtain identification of responsible parties to whom littering tickets could be directed if a mess were found in the morning.
It is high time that beachgoers here began to practice the old backpacker’s mantra of “leave no trace.” As for time, it is running short to protect those very beaches from eventually falling victim to climate change.