OCEAN CITY- The accolades for the popular Adopt Your Beach program continued to flow this week with Ocean City Surf Club formally presenting the governor’s certification to the Mayor and Council.
Last spring, the Ocean City Surf Club, under the auspices of the Coastal Resources Legislative Committee, or “Green Team,” initiated an Adopt Your Beach program, which, as the name implies, is a grassroots effort to have the private sector supplement the town’s beach cleaning efforts. Under the program, a group of organization literally adopts a section of the beach in Ocean City, sometimes a single block where their business or condo association in located.
For the onset, the program was wildly successful with all but a handful of sections of beach not yet adopted. Last month, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s Office on Service and Volunteerism presented the program with a certification to the Ocean City Surf Club, program coordinator Effie Cox and the Green Team along with the Maryland Coastal Bays Program for their efforts in establishing the Adopt Your Beach program and nurturing its fruition. On Monday, the Ocean City Surf Club presented the governor’s certification to the Mayor and Council for display in City Hall. Ocean City Surf Club project coordinator Effie Cox was especially singled out for her efforts by Councilman and Green Team liaison Tony DeLuca.
“I would like to publicly recognize and congratulate Effie Cox for her leadership on this project,” he said. “It’s really been amazing to see this thing get off the ground. I know we talked about it two years ago and to bring it to fruition is just amazing.”
DeLuca also recognized the Ocean City Surf Club for its contribution to the highly successful program along with the countless volunteers who have made it so successful.
“I’d also like to congratulate the Ocean City Surf Club and especially all of our amazing volunteers who are out there four times already at least,” said DeLuca. “It’s been amazing to watch this thing take off.”
Ocean City Surf Club President Wyatt Harrison also praised Cox and the roughly 100 volunteers for getting the Adopt Your Beach program up and running and expanding so quickly.
“Effie has been working for endless years on this,” he said. “I’ve been involved for at least two years with the Ocean City Surf Club, but we’ve talked about it before that. The program was amazing in its first year and I think we adopted almost every street in Ocean City.”
DeLuca said the governor’s certificate would find a prominent home somewhere in City Hall for display.
“They’re going to present the governor’s certificate for the cleanest beach on the east coast,” he said. “I wish he would have given us the cleanest beach in the world, but we’ll take the cleanest beach on the east coast for now.”