Stinky beach may have to stay that way
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
Living across the street from the beach is not always, well, a day at the beach.
Just ask Lori Bervaldi Tucker, a resident of Key West by the Sea, a condominium complex across the road from Smathers Beach. She appealed to city commissioners at their last meeting to do something about the trash, sea grass and other debris that are trapped near and on shore by the beach jetty across from the Key West Airport.
“In addition to the putrid smell it emits, this area also gathers trash and dead sea life, which rot and smell as well,” she said. “All summer Key West citizens and tourists have smelled this putrid smell and looked at this eyesore and wouldn’t dream of going into the polluted water in this area.”
The city Public Works Department was out the next day with a tractor, cleaning up pockets of sea grass trapped by the jetty currents. But under state law, the city cannot remove anything organic floating in the water or anywhere below the high mean water mark on the beach. So the worst of the smelly detritus will have to stay, said City Manager Jim Scholl.
“You can remove man-made trash from the water, but not decaying organic material. We don’t have the permits to do that removal,” Scholl told Konk Life.
The city spends $700,000 a year for an outside firm to clean Smathers, Rest and Dog beaches every other day. But to clean below the high water mark would require permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection and possibly the Army Corps of Engineers. And below the wrack line is where most of the odiferous material is located.
Reef Relief, a local non-profit organization that in additional to protecting off-shore coral reefs uses its volunteers to help clean local beaches, has offered to step in. Mill McLeary, the group’s executive program director, sent an email to city officials after Bervaldi Tucker’s remarks, saying Reef Relief has a state permit allowing it to hold coastal clean-ups during the year.
“This is obviously a major problem when it comes to near-shore water quality and public health concerns,” McLeary said.
But Scholl said Reef Relief and the city have the same problem: They can’t remove organic material from the water or below the high tide mark. That material is part of the beach ecosystem and contains insects and other animals that are part of nature’s food chain and protected by environmental laws. Once the summer ends and the winds and currents shift, the jetty won’t be such a catch-basin, he said.
“In my opinion, it becomes cost prohibitive to try and go to get all the permitting required. It can be tens of thousands of dollars and then you have the cost of the equipment you need to do the work,” Scholl said. “It’s hard to fight Mother Nature.”
But Bervaldi Tucker said in her comments to city commissioners that the smell persists “365 days a year. It is just worse in the summer.” She started a petition at Change.org, the on-line petition website and said she gathered over 300 signatures in less than a week. She requested twice a week beach clean-up year round, with more frequent cleaning during the summer.
Scholl said he will bring the matter up again to city commissioners at their Sept. 3 meeting.
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Was the area that smelly when Ms Bervaldi Tucker was considering the condo as a residence? I’m not indifferent to the issue because it obviously stinks, but if the smell is so persistent then didn’t it exist at the time she viewed her condo? Isn’t that the kind of info local residents could volunteer? Or really any Key West resident? The law is the law, and a poor choice is a poor choice.