St. Simons tells UGA fans: Trash-talking OK, your trash is not
For the people who worry about the beaches of St. Simons Island, today is the biggest day of Georgia-Florida week.
Thousands of UGA students and other Bulldogs fans will be partying until dark. What they leave behind won't be pretty.
In 2008, cleanup crews removed 10.4 tons of trash. Last year, 9.9 tons were removed.
"It takes a lot of empty bottles and cans and Styrofoam to make 10 tons," A.G. "Spud" Woodward, director of the DNR's Coastal Resources Division, told the AJC. "In an ideal world, every group of students would take the trash bags given to them and police their own areas. You mix recreational beverages and youth and everything together, you don't get perfection."
For the last two years, the DNR has sent a letter to UGA President Michael Adams asking him to get the message out. This year's letter noted fans' revelry "turns our beaches into something resembling a solid waste landfill!"
UGA officials have been helpful, Woodward said.
Adams wrote Woodward two weeks ago to say he had forwarded the message "to be distributed widely with a reminder that we expect our constituent groups to be respectful of your concerns and the environment on the Georgia and Florida coast at all times, particularly during the festivities surrounding the Georgia-Florida game."
DNR officers, Glynn County police and public works employees, and volunteers will be out in force to try to minimize the littering, Woodward said.
Cooler temperatures and high tide in the early afternoon also might help.
The 2008 weekend was the worst it's ever been, Woodward said. Last year, after the DNR made its initial plea, was slightly better.
Now Woodward is hoping for significant improvement, but he's also a realist.
"It's a learning curve," he said. "Plus you've got students coming and going. So you've got to remind them each year."
More Stories
The Latest
