A six pack of Corona and some smokes probably don’t add up to $15.
But busting out a bottle of cold beer or flicking a cigarette butt into the sand on Tybee Island this summer is likely to send beachgoers packing with a $300 hole burning in their swimsuit pockets.
City authorities have asked police to stop issuing warnings to anyone they spot littering and instead adopt the same zero-tolerance approach they’ve taken for years toward glass on the beach.
“We want the word to get out that we will not tolerate littering on the beach,” said City Councilman Paul Wolff. “It’s a detriment to our tourism business and a hazard to marine life.”
Glass, on the other hand, is a safety issue.
Officer Kevin Street said police are enforcing the rules that are in place as directed and looking for things that actually cause harm. He and officer Pat Welsh, both on beach patrol May 1, said they’ve seen what happens when carefree children run toward the surf and step on a forgotten glass bottle that’s been buried.
“Now we’ve got somebody getting stitches,” Street said.
They’re on the lookout for other things when they patrol the beach, too, like fires and, surprisingly, the occasional car. Welsh recalled recently ticketing someone for driving a BMW onto the beach to, apparently, get a nice photo.
In the past, Wolff said, officers handed out a fair number of warnings. Street and Welsh still did so a couple of times on May 1. Street asked a man to get down off some jetties rather than ticket him — “If you rub up against those things, they will slice you up like ribbons.”
The officers also provided a grocery bag to a group of beachgoers to ensure none of their trash escaped.
For glass, though, the officers didn’t budge. They were polite but firm to the people they spotted violating the ordinance five or so times in a few hours May 1. “Hey, how are you doing?” Street said, introducing himself to a woman sitting in a beach chair drinking beer out of a glass bottle. “... You have a glass bottle on the beach. Do you have a plastic cup you can put that in? I’d hate for you to waste that.”
The majority of the people Street and Welsh ticketed did not argue. Most were visitors. One man, a local, caught just after pulling a bottle from a cooler, said: “I know, but I can’t even get it open.”
There are other warnings: Signs on both sides of access points up and down the beach clearly state what isn’t allowed. Wolff said those signs have been reworked several times over the last decade to make them easier to understand. They even have illustrations of prohibited items.
The councilman said many of the violations are caused by “day trippers” who know the rules. Police seemed to agree, saying that sometimes people just don’t read the signs.
“I think people have gotten too lax about thinking they can get away with stuff, and that’s not going to be happening out here anymore,” Wolff said. “Not with litter, anyway.”
Mayor Jason Buelterman said he’s actually gotten more positive feedback than negative since litter enforcement was ramped up mid-March.
After surfing on a recent Sunday evening, he said, he counted dozens of cigarette butts on the beach’s south end.
“It’s very frustrating,” Buelterman said. “... Unfortunately it’s come to a point where we’re going to start enforcing it more aggressively. Maybe that will dissuade litterers.”
Buelterman and Wolff both said the goal is to make littering go away, not to generate tickets.
The officers pointed out they do other things besides write tickets. They locate children who get separated from their parents, provide first aid for people who get stung by jellyfish and give the elderly rides off the beach, for example.
“If people follow the beach rules,” Street said, “they’ll probably have very little interaction with us.”