A huge shout out today to the volunteers from Happy Valley for the Good Harbor Beach clean-up Saturday morning! The photo below shows Richard and Donna setting up a tent of provisions for the volunteers.
Happy Valley is the fourth group of volunteers to tackle Good Harbor Beach this spring. You may ask, does the beach need so many clean-ups? The answer is a resounding yes!
This past week was Senior Skip Day with, at one point, reportedly, approximately one thousand kids at GHB. The teens came from high schools all around Massachusetts including Brookline, Stoneham, Wakefield, and Marlborough (these are the names of the schools provided by the kids). Beginning around 9am, the kids began pouring onto GHB, and drinking right from the get-go. Fortunately, the portable bathrooms this year are open in May (thank you City!) But they ran out of toilet paper so the dunes soon became the place of choice to relieve themselves. The kids were asked repeatedly to keep out of the dunes and to clean up their trash.
By early afternoon, there was an alcohol related fender bender in the parking lot. I don’t know if this is what prompted the Gloucester Police to come but at around 3:00 pm, there were two officers on the beach breaking up the party and carrying six-packs off the beach.
Thank you to whoever called the police! The weather was lovely and warm and there were a number of families on the beach that appeared very uncomfortable around the large groups of drunk and belligerent teens.
The above photos are of how the kids left the beach, and this is after the trash had been collected into piles by volunteers and the DPW. The gulls got into some and many pieces were blown into the dunes, along the shoreline, the marsh, and all around the parking lot.
We citizens who love and treasure Good Harbor Beach do not mind sharing the beach with teens skipping school, we just don’t think they should leave their mountains of trash behind, and also relieve themselves in the dunes. We are grateful to the DPW for cleaning up the garbage and grateful to all the volunteer groups that have been coming this past spring however, we really need to manage out trash better. Allowing it to blow into the ocean and beach habitat is simply not acceptable!
Two suggestions, and if you think of any, please share-
Hand out trash bags to beachgoers, especially large groups.
Assign an officer on the beach to give out tickets for littering. Word would get out soon enough if the fines were steep enough.
