National Park Service officials want to hear from you about a new regulation they are proposing that would prohibit leaving personal items overnight on the beaches of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
The draft of the regulation would prohibit unattended property — such as tents, canopies, umbrellas, awnings, chairs, and such sports items as volleyball nets — on the ocean beaches between sunset and sunrise daily.
It would also require that all holes dug on the beach be filled in before beachgoers leave the area.
The reason for the regulation is that equipment left on the beach after dark and holes not filled in are not only public safety issues, but also pose a hazard to protected sea turtles.
The proliferation of tents, awnings, chairs and other items left on the beach seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon. Perhaps the equipment is more readily available and more affordable than before.
But for whatever reason, you can go to the beach any summer day and see it lined with the tents and canopies, some tied together to make large encampments. Many groups set up makeshift volleyball courts and such things as pits for horseshoes. They might set up grills and tables for serving food.
And that’s all well and good — at least during daylight hours.
Most of these groups take all their beach “stuff” with them when they leave at the end of the day, but an increasing number do not. They leave it set up on the beach for the duration of their week’s vacation.
And after dark, these items become safety hazards for emergency personnel and for pedestrians.
Moonless nights on the seashore can be very dark. People — both locals and visitors — who enjoying nighttime walks on the beach have stumbled over the furniture and tripped into holes.
Since there are folks on the beach at night — walking, stargazing, and in some areas, enjoying campfires — emergencies can happen. First responders don’t need to deal with a maze of chairs or skeletons of awnings left there for the next day’s fun.
Stuff left on the beach can also be hazardous to the park’s wildlife, especially threatened and endangered sea turtles coming on shore to nest at night or hatchlings making their way back to the sea.
In the Park Service’s annual report on sea turtle nesting in January, resource officials noted, “Many visitors at (the seashore), especially in front of the villages, left their recreational beach equipment and chairs or loungers on the beach overnight. This equipment and furniture can cause turtles to forgo laying eggs by hampering or trapping animals attempting to locate a nesting site.”
The report specifically notes two incidents from 2011.
Paul Stevens, the seashore’s chief ranger, says that the park has had a regulation for some time that deals with property abandoned for more than 24 hours and allows items to be tagged with notices that they must be removed.
That effort has met with varying degrees of success, and Stevens says there has been “a big increase” in complaints about the equipment left on the beaches after dark.
Last year, he says, park staff members talked about updating the regulation, making it more specific and stressing its importance. But they decided to wait and see what happened over the summer.
What happened last summer, he says, was another increase in the complaints.
So now seashore officials have written a draft regulation, and they want input from the public before it goes on the books for the summer season.
“For the first year,” Stevens says, “we want to do this with education.”
He wants residents, visitors, off-island property owners, members of civic groups, property management companies, and other businesses, such as the ones that rent equipment, to come to a meeting on Dec. 4 and to chat with seashore officials about the draft regulation.
These folks will be extremely important in educating visitors about the rules, and Stevens wants them to make suggestions on how to make the regulations better and achieve the goal of safety for people and animals.
Stevens notes that the towns in northern Dare County and in Corolla in Currituck County have all faced — or are facing — the same problem.
The town of Duck was the first to regulate personal items left on the beach overnight in 2009. Southern Shores followed in 2010. Stevens says the towns also began with education and have had some success, but that it has taken three or four years.
Corolla also has regulations and has hired a contractor to clear its beaches of items left after dark.
Nags Head, he says, has just passed regulations, and also intends to start with educating beachgoers. Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk are both considering how to deal with the litter of personal items.
It’s not an easy job for the municipalities or the federal government.
Removing all the items left overnight can be time consuming and expensive. Education can be a seemingly unending process since a new crop of visitors arrives each week.
But, most of all, neither the towns nor Park Service want to be seen as too heavy handed with our visitors.
We do depend on them to keep our economy going, and we do want to make them feel welcome. We want them to have a good time and to return to the Outer Banks.
But the proliferation of stuff left on the beach overnight is getting out of hand.
It is apparently not as big a problem in the seashore as it is on the northern beaches. On Hatteras, many folks drive to the beach in off-road vehicles or drive to public access areas and walk out to the beach. Most of these visitors take their equipment with them when they leave.
The problem on Hatteras, Stevens said, is mostly in front of the villages — and to a lesser degree in front of the campgrounds.
Many visitors who rent oceanfront houses don’t immediately see the problem with leaving their personal items on the beach. After all, they are here for the week, can stake their space out early to be sure it’s there for them each day, and not have to carry equipment back and forth.
And that’s pretty much okay if they leave for lunch or an afternoon nap or a short shopping trip.
But it’s not okay overnight.
There’s also somewhat of an equity issue involved. The seashore beaches are no one’s private property.
As Stevens notes, “They are public beaches and they are there for everyone.”
The proposed seashore regulation is somewhat different from the regulations the towns have in place. The towns set a specific time that items must be removed — for example at 5 p.m. or 7 p.m.
Stevens says seashore officials realize that many folks stay on the beach in the evening and the clutter isn’t a problem until after dark, so they are proposing a sunset to sunrise prohibition.
The seashore regulation would also cover holes dug on the beach — and sand piled up on the beach, often from digging a hole. Both become obstacles after dark for people, emergency vehicles, and animals.
Beachgoers would be required to fill in the holes or level out the piled-up sand before they leave.
Better yet, would be not digging holes and tunnels, Stevens says. It’s great fun to bury someone in a hole or dig out tunnels, but it is also extremely dangerous. Just last summer, a man died after the sand collapsed on him in a tunnel he and friends were digging between two deep holes.
The proposed regulation also provides an exception for such things as special events and is not applicable to beach restoration or nourishment equipment.
You can stop by the Avon Fire House on Thursday, Dec. 4, between 5 and 7 p.m. to informally chat with park officials about the proposal, ask questions, or make suggestions.
Click here to read the one-page draft regulation.
