OCEAN CITY — For the first time since the inception of Ocean City’s Adopt Your Beach program, each of the resort’s ocean blocks are assigned after a couple of benefactors scooped up the last ones.
In 2016, 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, which was the brainchild of Ocean City Surf Club coordinator Effie Cox, a group or organization, or in some cases individuals, literally adopt a section of beach, sometimes a single block or group of blocks.
From the outset in 2016, the program has been wildly successful with all but a handful of ocean blocks along the 10-mile barrier island not adopted. During a Green Team meeting earlier this month, the Ocean City Surf Club received a citation from Governor Larry Hogan for establishing and maintaining the Adopt Your Beach program, marking the third year in a row the project received the citation from the governor.
The governor’s citation was presented by Delegate Mary Beth Carozza (R-38C), who lives in Ocean City. During the same meeting, it came to light just seven blocks among the 146 or so had not been adopted, and Carozza stepped up and adopted the block at 23rd Street near her neighborhood. Since then, the remaining untaken blocks have been adopted by Billy Weiland on behalf of the Assateague Coastal Trust (ACT).
“We had seven ocean blocks that had not been adopted,” Councilman and Green Team chair Tony DeLuca told the Mayor and Council on Monday. “Mary Beth Carozza stepped up and adopted a block and Billy Weiland from Assateague Coastal Trust adopted the rest. This is the first year we’ve ever had 100 percent. Every block in Ocean City has been adopted to be cleaned four times a year by these groups, which is pretty exciting.”
Weiland is the communications manager for the Assateague Coastal Trust (ACT), an environmental group that advocates on behalf of Assateague and the entire coastal bays watershed. Earlier this year, Weiland established a Trash-Free Assateague (TFA) aimed at cleaning trash and debris from the barrier island and increasing awareness about litter, particularly single-use plastics. Weiland said on Tuesday adopting the remaining blocks in Ocean City’s Adopt Your Beach program was a natural extension of that.
“You’ve heard or seen the project I developed for ACT called Trash-Free Assateague back in February and this is just kind of an extension of the project,” he said. “TFA will be using events like beach cleanups, ecotours and educational outreach to gain attention and bring awareness to the littering and loose trash issues that this area is seeing, as well as promoting the banning of one-time use plastics.”
Weiland said the TFA program, and by extension the Adopt Your Beach program, can be utilized to forward the message about eliminating or at least curtailing the use of one-time use plastics so frequently collected along the beaches in the resort area.
“It’s going to start at the individual level before businesses and corporations make the change,” he said.
DeLuca told the council on Monday while single-use plastics remain a concern in terms of beach pollutants, a different source has been identified as one of the main culprits.
“The most obvious one is cigarette butts,” DeLuca said. “Containers are needed in strategic places such as street ends and at the Inlet. They’re working on a grant so we can do that next year because we missed our opportunity for this year.”
