Thank you, Patty!

Since comments are not easy to see in this Blogger interface (maybe I haven't figured it out), I will gladly print this comment from a recent visitor to our beaches:
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(From Peggy:)

I am 100% behind the efforts to keep Panama City Beach clean!! We just returned from a week's vacation at The Summit. Everything was wonderful until we hit the beach. Since there were lots of people on the beach, we really didn't notice the trash. However, once we got into the water, we were amazed to find several beer cans and beer bottles floating in the surf. At first we just assumed it was probably just 1 or 2 people who had been in the water drinking and just got lazy with their trash. However, we were utterly shocked at what we saw during an early morning trip to the beach.

Trash was everywhere -- mounds of beer cans and miscellaneous trash strewn everywhere. Items such as pop cans, food wrappers, sandals, towels, children's toys, and even a tent were literally covering the beach. I kept thinking that the condo must send out crews in the morning to pick the trash up but in the hour and a half that I was out there, no one every showed. My son and I took on the rather large task ourselves, filling approximately 2-3 of the blue trash cans (I KID YOU NOT!). It took us well over an hour but it looked great (and we felt great) when it was done! If there are crews that do clean those beaches and it was just a matter of timing, I'm sure they were pretty pleased to see their work was all done!

Prior to this vacation, we were so excited because we had heard how wonderful Panama City Beaches are and how they were rated as the most beautiful. The beaches are beautiful, when they are clean! To be honest, I came across this website while investigating cleaner beaches for our next vacation. I couldn't believe that THESE were the same beaches which were given such a high rating. Please do what you can to get people involved. It really doesn't take that much time and it is SO worth the effort.

If a couple lowly vacationers can take an hour out of our limited vacation time to do some much needed cleaning, surely neighbors to the beach would also be willing. Your beaches are beautiful and I would love to come back again! P.S. If we do come again, my family and I will definitely do our part!
August 7, 2007 3:05 PM

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P.S. Patty, if you see this, will you please let me know where your family lives? We'd love you to come see us again!

Tent City on the Beach

A couple of locals have pointed out the rising amount of beach items such as tents, umbrellas and chairs that are left in the sand once the visitor leaves. These items have become so cheap that it's easier to just leave them for "the next lucky vacationer" than take them home or dispose of them.

The tent above was on Thomas Dr. for several days during the week of the 4th. They do not get removed quickly in most cases. I guarantee you that you can go to the beach today and find an abandoned tent.

UPDATE: 07-22-07

This article was in today's Panama City News Herald. It seems that our neighbors to the west are always more proactive about keeping the beach clean, and we need to follow their lead.

Bigger Problems

Update: July 13, 2007: I promise I didn't squall this!

A funny Squall yesterday said folks like me need to worry about bigger problems than trash on the beach. I knew from the beginning that most locals won't see this as a big issue.

I'll just have to keep trying to communicate how I believe it's just as big of an issue as property tax hikes, home insurance costs and airports. So let me try to put it in a new nutshell to change this Squaller's view...

THE IDIOTS WHO LITTER OUR BEACHES ARE NOT GOOD CUSTOMERS OR CITIZENS TO OUR COUNTY AND ECONOMY.

BY ENFORCING OUR LITTER LAWS AND CLEANING UP OUR BEACHES, WE WILL RUN OFF THE FEW BAD CUSTOMERS AND ATTRACT MORE GOOD CUSTOMERS WHO WILL PUMP MORE MONEY INTO OUR COUNTY ECONOMY.


WE'RE MISSING OUT ON BIG DOLLARS COMING TO OUR COMMUNITY WHICH COULD HELP LOWER PROPERTY TAXES AND RAISE INCOMES SO WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO AFFORD INSURANCE IN THE FUTURE.

Independence.

Thank you very much to the few of you who wrote in and said you would work some of the beaches, including the bays. We didn't have enough sign up to come near full coverage, but we'll keep working on it.

Warning: the following photos should be extremely offensive and disturbing. Click on photos for larger images.

All photos taken AFTER trash crews came by to empty the blue cans.

KeepTheBeachClean.com Fireworks Cleanup Day - JULY 5

As much as I hate to see federal dollars spent on issues that should be resolved by locals, thanks to our hard working senators, we now have National Clean Beaches Week during July 4th.

Please sign up to join the first annual "KeepTheBeachClean.com Fireworks Cleanup Day." We'll do it Thursday, July 5th.

All you have to do is send an email with or without your name and let me know what stretch of beach you will cover that day. I will announce through the site what parts are covered, as well as photos. Send an email to info@KeepTheBeachClean.com. Thank you!

More Treasure in the Sand

Replacing trash with treasure is one of the goals at KeepTheBeachClean.com. An article in the AJC today reports Atlanta is rich and getting richer.

The article quotes other media as well:

"Atlanta consistently ranks as a city hospitable to the rich:
• Business 2.0 reported that Atlanta "leads the nation in attracting the labor market's most coveted demographic: college-educated workers ages 25 to 34."
• Kiplinger's Personal Finance said metro Atlanta is the largest U.S. city in the "married with kids" age bracket.
• Black Enterprise magazine said Atlanta and Washington are at the top of the list of "10 best cities for African-Americans."
• Fortune said Atlanta ranks third behind New York and Houston as home to large public corporations on its Fortune 500 list, such as Home Depot, UPS and Coca-Cola."

There are great people in Atlanta who do not know how to look beyond the "drunk-fest" image to see our amazing beaches and environment in Bay County. It's not just about the summer vacation season either; we should be targeting businesses to have meetings, retreats and presentations down here year round. I don't believe many Atlantans realize that on some of those cold, rainy February mornings, we have sunny 60 degree weather down here. Corporate folks love to "get away" to make big, important decisions.

We need to improve our product and image to appeal to them; it is the easiest path to improving our county's tourism industry, and possibly Bay County's entire economy. We should be known as "Atlanta's Beach."

To Rake, or Not to Rake?

We currently spend over a half million dollars a year in Bay County to clean our beaches. It is expensive to operate high-tech machinery and tractors to groom the beach. According to this article on beach grooming from the Surfrider Foundation, grooming has its negatives, including:

• Significantly lower diversity and abundance of wrack-associated animals (wrack is seaweed that washes up on our shores from time to time.)


• Lower abundance of shorebirds


• Higher relative numbers of flies


• Lower numbers of native plants


• Coarser sand

In another article from Surfrider, it claims that the federal government does not allow grooming on most beaches during sea turtle and shorebird nesting seasons, unless a special annual permit is granted where it is proven that no nesting activity exists. As many crazy hoops as Bay County already has to jump through to protect the turtles, how do we avoid this one?

Last year, the TDC renewed a 5 year contract with a company to continue to use tractors, trailors and Barber Surf Rakes on the beach. By the time that contract is over in 2011, I hope to have the TDC convinced that people, not machines, are what we need to keep the beaches clean.