As the seasonal population of Southold Town continues to increase, so does the cost of cleaning up the trash they leave behind. In 2016 the town spent $161,858 picking up garbage at beaches and road ends, a total that includes salaries, landfill fees, fuel fees and new domed garbage cans.
At a town board work session this morning, Jeff Standish, Southold Town’s director of public works, presented a slide show of photos taken last week depicting overflowing garbage cans, piles of broken beach chairs and coolers and trash strewn about at local beaches and road ends.
Garbage is picked up at beaches five days a week, Standish says, but they can’t keep up with the mess.
Supervisor Scott Russell said that the town’s management of the beaches has become very expensive and with a limited number of traffic control officers available to enforce rules, the problem becomes almost insurmountable.
“I think there’s a misunderstanding in the town that there’s only a handful of beaches,” he said. “People need to remember that we have dozens and dozens of road ends that need to be attended to as well.”
Russell asked how the town had gotten itself into the garbage business and after viewing the photos said, “For the life of me I cannot figure out how some self-entitled prima donna thinks it’s the taxpayer’s job to throw out his cooler, his umbrella, his broken beach chairs.”
Someone suggested taking the cans away completely, but Russell said that this had been tried in the past and that people would just leave garbage there anyway.
“The conundrum here is if you take the cans away they’re going to dump anyway. If you put more cans there, more people are going to dump there,” added Councilman Bill Ruland.
Russell stressed that no one on the town board is proposing eliminating the cans completely; rather, a plan needs to be developed to deal with the problem.
Signs are posted at most locations indicating that there are fines for throwing out household garbage, but people are dumping beach chairs, umbrellas and trash that isn’t considered household garbage.
Councilwoman Louisa Evans suggested changing the signage to specify what kind of garbage is not permitted, but both Russell and Councilwoman Jill Dougherty pointed out that people are already dumping household garbage right under the signs that clearly state “No Household Garbage.”
Over the years the problem has been steadily increasing, Standish said in an interview.
“It’s a disaster,” he said. “About 10 years ago we had to start picking up garbage on the weekends to keep up and even with doing that, the beach garbage is overflowing on Monday mornings.”
The town has already disposed of 98 tons of garbage so far this year and at that rate the totals for 2017 will easily exceed last year’s, he said.
Russell acknowledged that it was too late to implement any useful plan for this year but added that once the season’s over, the board will have to come up with a long-term plan.
“We need to reduce our role in the garbage business,” he said.
