Carter’s Beach in Port Mouton has exploded in popularity over the years and with the influx of people, has also come garbage.
Robert Ross is the site coordinator for the yearly Carter’s Beach Clean-Up, which is a part of the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-Up.
The group has been picking up after beach visitors since 2006.
Ross explains what they found last year.
“Multiple bags of trash, I think it added up to 50 pounds plus, lots of plastics, lots of discarded baby diapers, cigarette butts.”
Ross is curious about what they will find this year as the province removed the trash can from the beach, in hopes that visitors would pack in and pack out.
The beach is a pending nature reserve and has been for several years.
Nova Scotia Environment has maintained that having less facilities, like toilets and trash cans, will deter people from coming but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Photos taken by locals this summer show cars lining both sides of Carter’s Beach road, right down to the former old highway and main route through Port Mouton.
Ross says trash isn’t the only problem on the beach either.
“I guess our biggest fear is the increasing use of the sensitive beach dunes as basically a bathroom, as an outdoor toilet.”
Ross says they find used toilet paper and diapers on the dunes at the second and third beach.
That was a bigger problem until the Region of Queens stepped in a couple years ago and put in portable toilets at the parking lot.
A steering committee has been put in place, made up of government staff and locals, to try to determine what best to do with the beach in the future.
It was relatively unknown outside of locals until the late 2000s.
Despite all of this however, Ross says most people are respectful and many locals pitch in daily to keep the beach clean, often taking daily walks to pick up trash first thing in the morning.
If you want to take part in the annual clean-up, the group is meeting Saturday, September 22 at 9:30 a.m. at the Carter’s Beach parking lot.
Story and photo by Brittany Wentzell
Twitter: @BrittWentzell
