Alternative Spring Break Students in Panama City Beach

Many thanks to the team from Michigan Tech who traveled 26 hours to reach the world's most beautiful beaches, and served 5 days helping us keep the beach clean. Way to go Michigan Tech Huskies!

Students Speak to the TDC

Marc and Nick stood before Bay County's Tourist Development Council to thank them for the hospitality and to encourage better options for cleaner beaches. The students suggested securing the trash barrels, offering bags to tourists and making it easy for all to participate in keeping the beach clean. Great job, students!

Welcome Back, Huskies!

Students from Michigan Tech traveled 26 miles in their school van to help Panama City Keep the Beach Clean. We are happy to have Michigan Tech for the 2nd year in a row. Thanks again to Royal American Hospitality for housing the students again this year, the third annual Keep the Beach Clean Alternative Spring Break.

Video from WMBB - Tent City on the Beach

Panama City Beach Trash, July 4, 2009

Worse than the spring break photos, if you ask me. At least the spring break junk is isolated and fairly easy to clean up. Fireworks make a ridiculous mess.

Hopefully one of you experts -- maybe even an expert employed / contracted with the TDC -- could say, "Kirk, no worries. This waste is biodegradable and gone in a few days. It's harmless to our sand, our image and our environment."

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?