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| Photo by Jack Reynolds ALO's executive director welcomes volunteers during LBI's first environmental cleanup of the year. |
Members of ALO met up with nearly 50 volunteers bright and early at Bayview Park in Brant Beach on Saturday, Jan. 5, for its first environmental cleanup of 2013. The group worked well into the afternoon, collecting litter left over from Sandy and the more recent December northeaster, which re-flooded the area and scattered piles of storm-tainted debris from curbsides and sidewalks into the streets and onto bay beaches.
“It was a little discouraging getting out for the first time since some of those large storms to have to go and clean up areas that were already done, just knowing how much work went into cleaning those areas,” said Chris Huch, ALO’s executive director. “But the stuff that ended up being deposited by the last flooding event was stuff that was going to end up on beaches or wetlands at some point, whether from runoff or things like that. So it’s a step in the right direction, even though it was a minor setback. In terms of the larger picture, it was a really good thing,” he added.
Because of the severe devastation caused by the slew of recent storms, ALO has been focusing on cleaning up many areas it wouldn’t necessarily be concerned with, such as low-lying streets, parks and playgrounds. On Saturday, volunteers targeted the beaches in Ship Bottom and Beach Haven, as well as some streets and playgrounds in Brant Beach, Holgate and Beach Haven West. Volunteers ridded the areas of plastics, paper and other general litter, though cleaning supplies and large pieces of wood or decking too heavy to remove or dispose of were also found.
Angela Andersen, recycling/clean communities coordinator for Long Beach Township, headed a group of 15 volunteers, including students from Temple University’s rugby team, during the cleanup’s first trip to Holgate. Permission to enter the area had not been granted by the township before then due to safety concerns. Picnic tables, gas grills, lawn furniture and other large debris from the Joan Avenue Park, one of the township’s Green Acres parks and bay beaches, were stockpiled and immediately picked up by nearby disaster-relief contractors who transported the debris to the Ocean County Landfill in Manchester.
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| Photo by Jack Reynolds Long Beach Township's recycling/clean communities coordinator leads a group of Temple students to clean the hardest hit area on LBI. |
“It was a real good first sweep because it opened the way for the municipalities so they can come through, because we really have to start rebuilding our bay beaches,” Andersen noted. “We’re going to have to rebuild the tennis courts at the park because they got undermined, and we’re going to have to replace the playground equipment so that it gets back in ship-shape for the summer,” she added.
The storm-related cleanups began in November during Thanksgiving weekend. Though plans to start the cleanings on LBI were discussed immediately after Sandy hit the area, Huch said the organization did not want to get in the way of the municipal crews who were steadfastly working to sort out more-dire issues. Since then, the township, along with Jetty + Waves 4 Water, has been providing cleaning supplies for the volunteers. The Long Beach Island Health Department, which relocated to the Long Beach Township Municipal Complex in Brant Beach after its building suffered flood damage, has been offering free tetanus shots to safeguard residents and workers.
Todd Stone, 22, a college student who works as a Beach Haven lifeguard during the summer, had initially reached out to ALO to assist in helping clean up the area when he knew he would be home from school for Thanksgiving break. Huch said Stone had created a Facebook page for the event that accidentally went public and wound up bringing in more than 1,000 volunteers to help clean up the entire area from LBI to Tuckerton during the first event.
“Todd was one of the big people that stepped up and got the event going in the right direction, so he definitely deserves a lot of credit,” Huch emphasized.
Many volunteers, from local residents and neighboring inhabitants to out-of-state groups such as AmeriCorps and former ALO interns, have worked alongside ALO every week since then, for days at a time, to clear lingering Sandy remnants. But Huch said the number of people assisting has dwindled. Though he said he understands that people need to get back to their daily lives, he expressed a great need for further cleanups.
In order to help ALO continue its mission, Jetty, a local surf and skate apparel and screen-printing company, donated $10,000 to the nonprofit organization in December, which the company raised through its sale of Hurricane Sandy relief T-shirts. Jetty is still selling the shirts and will soon begin selling relief hoodies to support future donations.
“ALO is an important organization to have around and support,” said Jeremy DeFilippis, co-owner of Jetty. “They’re a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and they don’t even have an office right now. We imagined they could probably use every penny of (our donation) and more to get things back up and running. Something like (Sandy) could basically put an organization that small to sleep if they didn’t get donations.
“We just want to support their effort after Sandy and also hopefully help them get their feet back underneath them with everything that the ALO does, keeping our beaches clean, keeping our waterways clean and running some good events throughout the summer,” he added.
Huch said the generous donation will help ALO rebuild its office in Ship Bottom, which suffered from 3½ feet of flood water and mold damage even though the group immediately set to work cleaning the building after the storm. The organization will have to purchase new furniture and program materials that were destroyed as well. In the interim, Huch said he is working remotely from his bedroom at home, and the large donation made purchasing a smart phone for work purposes incredibly convenient.
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| Photo by Jack Reynolds Kate Stauffer of Temple buries a baby turtle she found amidst the debris, along the beach. |
“We really didn’t comprehend how vast of a donation we were getting (from Jetty),” said Huch. “We’ve had a lot of support from community members and Alliance for a Living Ocean members since the storm, but a donation of that size, even though it’s not going to be enough to put us back in the same place we were before the storm, was something that’s hard to even talk about. It was so exciting to see, and I was so taken aback by their generosity.”
ALO’s environmental cleanups will start taking place every other weekend, to give volunteers some time off and to encourage others to join the event. Reusable water bottles donated by Mizu, a California-based company and decorated with Jetty + Waves 4 Water decals, are being sold for $10 each, compared to the $12 other local distributors will offer; it is hoped that price will attract a larger attendance at the cleanups.
ALO is in the process of updating its website system to allow for faster updates. To stay current with information regarding the organization’s environmental cleanups, visit its Facebook page here.
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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