On Earth Day Weekend, be a part of an effort to clean up York's beaches from debris like the dead balloons seen here about to make their way out to sea.
Photo by Allie Hayford
Community volunteers of all ages, and from all walks of life, have come out for past Adopt-A-Beach programs in York. This year, mark you calendar for April 19 to be a part of the public efforts at Long Sands or Short Sands, or consider adopting your own private beach.
Photo by Allie Hayford
YORK BEACH - Allie Hayford, a junior in York High School, will be sponsoring beach cleanups again this year starting with Earth Day weekend.
"The goal this year is expanding the Blue Ocean Society, Adopt-A-Beach program to all of our public beaches as well as later in the season starting to move up the Maine Coast," Hayford explained.
Earth Day community cleanups in York will be held on Saturday, April 19, starting at 1:30 p.m. on both Long Sands and Short Sands Beach. Hayford will host Long Sands and the Seacoast Democrats will host Short Sands.
Hayford will also be awarding small prizes to individuals who collect the most cigarette butts, most unusual item and highest number of plastic bottles.
"It makes it a little more fun to have a scavenger hunt and clean up the beaches at the same time," she said.
Local Girl Scout troops will hold private cleanups at the York Harbor and Cape Neddick beaches.
Hayford is also encouraging citizens with private beaches to get involved.
"Just contact me and I'll send you the data collection cards so private beaches can get picked up and we can also obtain the data for further research," she said.
Hayford has been tracking garbage data for Long Sands Beach for over a year with Blue Ocean Society and wants to convince her neighbors that there is plenty of room for improvement. Her main goal is to clean land debris, and she explained that 80 percent of the garbage found on the beaches comes from on-shore.
As she put it, "This includes beach trash that is not disposed of properly and storm water runoff. The other 20 percent is from the ocean, and our fishermen do an excellent job taking care of these items."
She pointed out that last year lone on Long Sands Beach, "We picked up 4,000-plus cigarette butts, thousands of shredded plastic items like wrappers, bottles and bags and some deplorable items like oil and bleach containers. I am especially concerned about the degradation of plastics into smaller pellet-size pieces as they get into our ocean water. Fish may ingest it, since it may look like jellyfish or smaller fish, and humans eat the fish."
But that is not the only thing that has this teen willing to give of her time and energy to help clean her town's beaches.
"My other major concern with plastics such as balloons with ribbons, fishing line and strapping is wildlife entanglement or entrapment," she said. "In January, as I was cleaning the south end of Long Sands, I found a dead seagull with a long piece of sticky plastic tape wrapped around its neck. It obviously hindered its ability to fly and it drowned."
Allie further explained that last year's cleanup team volunteers picked up 174 balloons from Long Sands, another source of wildlife entanglement.
"Please make sure you take down balloons after a party or open house," Hayford explained, "and never let balloons go free as a memorial. They inevitably end up ‘dead' in our ocean."
Hayford is also the recipient of a Plum Grant from "Do Something, Inc. to further expand her coastline preservation, education and beach cleanups. Her two goals are to expand oceanography programs in schools with attention to coastal preservation and reducing ocean pollution.
"My broader goal is to have more beaches adopted along the Maine coast so they are assured regular attention," she said.
Support for Hayford's project is from Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, a Portsmouth N.H.-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote awareness and conservation of the marine environment through education and research in New England, and Do Something, Inc., a national youth leadership organization with a mission to inspire young people to improve their communities.
The Long Sands Cleanup will meet at the bathhouse and Short Sands Cleanup will meet at the ramp near the playground. For more information or for data cards for private cleanups, contact Allie Hayford at dhayford@maine.rr.com.
"It's our ocean," Hayford said. "Come out and join me and make this world a better place, starting with Earth Day."
