City develops action plan for litter
Staff Report
The Folly Beach City Council held their regular workshop on October 13 and had only one thing on their mind: litter. Council member Tom Scruggs had been chosen to emcee the meeting whose complexity had derailed progressive conversation on at least one occasion. A moderator was called in for the initial meeting to help keep the group focused after July 4 celebrations left the beach front filthy with trash and left residents enraged. Scruggs presented the rest of Council and Mayor Carl Beckmann with a five step agenda to guide them to a plan of action before the meeting ended. After three official meetings on the issue, Laura Beck stated that she wanted the Council to have a plan of action before this meeting was over when asked what her goal for the evening was.
Council member Laura Beck discusses how the City can address litter on the beach.
It took more than two hours, but the Council was able develop solid ideas on how they wanted to move forward to address trash not only on the beach, but throughout the island and Charleston community as
well. Every member of Council had a different aspect of the problem to research and present which included: Rules/ordinances, trash removal from streets, trash removal from beach, community involvement, education/public awareness, and enforcement among others. After all the presentations and discussions, Council members picked out ideas they liked that could be implemented in order to create a desired “action plan”.
Residents may have started seeing action as early as October 27 when the Council hoped to vote on a discussed trash ordinance. Currently, the City does not have formal legislation directed at litter. However, Council members were unsure whether an ordinance could be crafted that quickly and that information was not available by our publication deadline.
One of the biggest concepts discussed was changing people’s attitudes. The problem is not litter, Beckmann says, but people.
“It’s not a trash problem. We have to change people’s behavior,” he said. However, it was carefully noted by Council member Dave Stormer that behavior and attitude are two significantly different concepts. The former can be legislated. Passing an ordinance that specifically addresses trash will allow the City to try and control some behaviors that contribute to litter. Changing attitudes, however, is a bit more complicated.
Scruggs had already begun to engage local educational institutions and has received support from the College of Charleston and the Citadel to begin a program that lets students know that Folly Beach is not a place to party and leave all your trash, but a place to be appreciated and enjoyed. However, he argues that the education can start much earlier and suggested the City begin a campaign of speaking to local elementary, middle, and high schools to explain why our environment needs to be protected. Hopefully, by influencing the younger generation, they will also be able to educate their parents and attitudes will begin to change as environmental awareness grows, Scruggs explained.
In addition to developing an education/public awareness plan and a litter ordinance, the City Council has several other items in their action plan. They want the City’s staff to evaluate the City’s capability to carry out a variety of tasks such as overseeing criminals assigned to community service and patrolling the beach to catch more litterers. In addition, while the Council has bantered over the possibility of adopting the State’s litter law since the City does not have one, they are now looking to formulate a litter law specific to Folly Beach. They are looking to create a citizen volunteer program which could mean a way for residents to do beach sweeps but could also mean something as involved as trained residential patrols designed to supplement the City’s strained police force. They also want to look into increasing their recycling capabilities which are largely limited by the County.
Mayor Beckmann expects to have all aspects of the plan defined and “ready to go” in December with everything in place to corral the litter problem by January 1. “That gives the residents time to react,” he says.
The City Council is scheduled to hold its next meeting, a workshop, on November 10 at 6pm in City Hall.
