Beach Clean Up

Beach Clean Up!

On Saturday morning, a most beautiful morning with temps in the 30's, 7 of us charged towards Benson Beach to make our contribution to the Grass Roots Garbage Gang's most noble and long-lived efforts to keep the beachs clean. This is no easy feat as whatever floats..ends up on the beach and that is not good. If you live near a stream, river or bay, if you work on a boat..please keep your trash nailed down..otherwise it floats away and we will find it. Please contact the GRGG's at their website(http://www.ourbeach.org/index.html) if you enjoy the beach and want to keep it clean.

Several of us are board members of the Friends of the Columbia River Gateway and we were very pleased to dedicate a modest amount of money and our time to assist in keeping one of our key resources clean.

We started at about 9. One team of three started at the North Jetty and the other team of four started at the base of North Head. We walked abreast and picked up literally every piece of junk we came across and finished the 1.8 mile long beach about 3 hours later.

Our efforts resulted in bagging (43 bags plus the unbaggable stuff) about 1000 pounds of trash including rope, a shopping cart, 5 tires, shoes, shotgun shell wadding, and miscellaneous plastic trash. Some items were small like plastic bottle tops, shotgun shell wadding and short lengths of rope. We found very few glass objects (only one light bulb and one fluorescent bulb) and as noted in other trash surveys..most of the trash is plastic. For the starving our finds included a quart of milk only 6 days old, a bottle of beer and an onion. If this was Lost!..well we'd have indigestion.

The weather was cold but very nice. A Bald Eagle watched us meander up the beach. Betsy's picker upper broke and she learned the hard way how painful it is to reach over and snag those small plastic things.

The State Parks crew cruised the beach as we finished up and picked up our bags of trash and stacks of junk. A few items had to be left including part of a lifeboat and rope ends that couldn't be dug out of the ground and a crab pot buried so deep it just might stay there a while. Most of the rope was cut off above ground and that is a chore as well. I'd recommend a machete for chopping rope out of wood and kelp piles.

As many high tide waves wash over the dunes at Benson, there are several areas behind the dunes that likely accumulate trash and addressing them is for another day. I and others think that we really needed 10 people to do an adequate job that would include the area behind the dune.

Hats off and we salute the Grass Roots Garbage Gang for their dedication in keeping one of our prize resources free of trash. Unfortunately..this is an ongoing battle waged three times a year.