HTB Coastal Clean Up Day + 72 Hours... Santa Monica Beach Trash Report

Dateline: Santa Monica Beach, Calif., Tuesday morning, Sept. 20, 2016. Well, it's been approximately 3 days or 72 hours since the 2016 Heal The Bay Coastal Clean Up Day this past Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016 and we were wondering what the beach looked like now since beachgoers have had 3 days to leave their trash behind AND the City of Santa Monica has had 3 days to clean it up.

You can be your own judge of both the littering habits of beachgoers in the past 72 plus hours and you can also judge for yourself if the City of Santa Monica is sending its staff out to hand pick up the trash between the berm and the water line.  It's an easy decision for the undersigned, however, since the following photos show that the City of Santa Monica continues to not pick up the trash between the berm and the water line.

The Photos:

The first photo below clearly shows where the mechanical beach cleaning equipment, e.g., tractors and rakes stop and do not clean up the trash, e.g., at the edge of the berm and down to the water line.

Below, an empty bottle of Heineken beer left uncollected by the City of Santa Monica...

If, indeed, there are City of Santa Monica sanitation dept. staff that walk the beach and hand pick up trash, then how could they miss this empty and discarded paper bag below?...  Answer:  Because they are not walking the beach and hand picking up trash between the berm and the water line.

Last but certainly not least, upon our return near to our starting point just south of the Santa Monica Pier at Lifeguard Tower #16, as I was walking along the soft sand between the berm and the lifeguard tower line, I barely missed stepping on a broken bottle of Modelo beer that had apparently been crushed by a tractor or truck driving along the soft sand (see photos below).  It was in two separate large pieces buried in the sand and I was fortunate not to have stepped on it and was able to carefully pick up the broken glass shards so that no one else would step on it.  If City workers did, in fact, walk the beach and hand pick up trash they would hopefully see this type of dangerous debris and collect it for disposal...

As first observed just to the right of my right foot...

... as partially collected and displayed for photo purposes......

a photo of the broken bottle showing how close it was to the Santa Monica Pier (in the background at the top of said photo below).....

... careful grasp of broken bottle fragments being carried to nearby trash container.....

Respectfully submitted,

Will Maguire,
"County Recurrent" News
http://CountyRecurrent.blogspot.com

(All photos by & Copyright Will Maguire 2016.)

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