Cemetary Point Beach Trash

Dear Editor:
After Tuesday`s City Commission meeting (where it was discussed that access to the Cemetery Point Beach will soon be shut off to cars after someone dumped garbage there AGAIN), my husband, Greg, and I decided to finally go down there and pick up some of the trash that we have been looking at for eons, while we could still haul it out by truck.

We went Wednesday afternoon, walked along the beach, crawled on our hands and knees through mangroves and spider webs. In a couple hours we had only covered part of the area but we had 16 giant bags of trash (mostly beer bottles), a barnacle covered and rusted lounge chair, a flip flop, a diaper, some socks and shirts, 2 vegetable crates and a galvanized tub. We left the
toilet someone dumped there. And of course, there were food wrappers from establishments not located in Cedar Key, plastic ice bags, bait bags and miles of fishing line. To be fair, there were some very considerate litterbugs -- the ones who bagged up their trash and then tossed it into the
marsh grass, where the bag dried up in the sun and disintegrated as soon as we picked them up. After we finished, we hauled the bags up to the cemetery gates to be picked up. I`m attaching a photo of the pile. I wonder, do people think that if they toss trash into the plants it will magically disappear? Do they do that in their own yards? What is so hard about taking the stuff you bring with you back home to your own garbage can?

This note is to tell you not about what we did but rather that you have an opportunity and obligation to write an article to inform the public about the littering problem on Cedar Key and that the guilty culprits are primarily the recreational fishermen who frequent that beach and show their gratitude by trashing it. By the way, Commissioner Pat Hibbits STILL hasn`t gotten the
dumpster for the Marina that he said that he would get during a Commission meeting weeks ago. Meanwhile, trash is blowing around down there, too.

Greg and I are going to get back down there and gather up more trash soon. There is so much that we barely made a dent, but we just don`t want to see it wind up in the water and MAYBE if people see the beach cleaned up, they will be less likely to trash it. Anyone else who cares to do come down and pick up trash is welcome to do so. It seems like a great job for the inmates who work in the cemetery sometimes or a youth group with more energy than we have but we`ll do what we can.

I hope you will do your best to inform the public about this problem and the obvious solution. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Adrienne Lang
Cedar Key

Click for printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend