The Surfrider Foundation South Texas Chapter's "Cite Litter Violators In Cameron County Beach Parks Petitition" (SIGN AND COMMENT NOW) has definitely taken off and I can't tell you how stoked we are with the amount of signatures and comments that have been posted to the petition site. At the time of me writing this, there are 621 signatures of our 2,500 signature goal and hundreds of comments to go along with them! Our goal is to get to 1,000 by the July 5th, 2012 Cameron County Commissioners Court Meeting at 8:30AM where they will be discussing this important issue. Judge Cascos has put it early on the agenda for convenience of those that want to be there!
Once again, the problem of actually issuing a litter citation is already being used as an excuse for not aggressively enforcing litter laws. In a response to an email sent to Judge Carlos Cascos from a concerned citizen, Judge Cascos wrote, "We will do all that we can, but at the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility of keeping our beaches clean are the users. However, we should be aggressively monitoring glass on the beach. We need to make sure that our law enforcement officials are enforcing the laws we have in place already, however, every single law enforcement officer I have spoken to have told me that unless they see someone actually discarding trash, they're hands are tied. They cannot make assumptions or speculate as to whom the trash belongs to unless there is some kind of evidence tying the trash to that particular individual."
This mindset of the challenge of issuing litter citations is limited in the way enforcement can be achieved and is a wall that is constantly put up when this debate comes back up. However, as I stated in the Letter to the Editor that was submitted last week, there are solutions to this and ways citations can be written after seeing violators leave trash behind. Simply put; wait until the end of the day, between 5:30 and 7PM and watch as they leave and THEN issue the ticket after they have packed up and left their area for home. It is literally a commitment of just an hour and a half instead of the entire day. Furthermore, if it is a glass violation, that citation can be written on the spot. It just takes actually having officers (Deputy Constables, Code Enforcement or even Park Rangers if need be) on the beach patrolling!
People often think of the trash issue as an environmental and public safety issue by itself and there is no doubt that it is but it goes much further than that and in to a much larger picture. That picture is beach access and the public's right to access and use Texas Public Beaches. Why in the world would decision makers or those that own businesses and homes on the beach want to have large groups of people out there that are going to continually disrespect and trash that beach making it dangerous for them, their families and their customers? Beach litter on the scale that we are seeing in Cameron County is a huge weapon in the movement to continue to gut the Open Beaches Act and privatize Texas beaches. The Rio Grande valley is quite literally shooting themselves in the foot by destroying the beaches that the Surfrider Foundation and Texas Constitution says they have every right to use and enjoy! My Parents and Grandparents taught me to respect what I love or someday I would lose it. I know hundreds of others my age that were taught the same thing. What happened with this lesson in Deep South Texas? Has it been lost? I wrote a post on this last year tying beach trash to the loss of our beach rights and I still believe it is a problem now.
At a time when the Texas Chapters of the Surfrider Foundation are organizing and getting ready to launch a major campaign to get the Open Beaches Act fully restored, the litter on our Cameron County Beaches is actually getting worse and providing literally piles of ammunition for our opponents to use against us!
The big picture is this. If South Texans continue to destroy our beaches and create a public safety risk on the scale that we have never before seen, then the Open Beaches Act is dead in the water before the Surfrider Foundation can even get started helping them preserve their rights to access and use those beaches! We educate the public and we clean up after them every day! The County Parks and Recreation Department does the same thing.
What we need is a real aggressive and concerted effort by Constable Zamora and his Deputies to assist us and help change the attitudes, behavior and culture of some of our beach users now before it is too late!
Take action now! Sign the petition, leave your comments and pass it on to your friends and families so we can present your support for litter law enforcement for cleaner and safer beaches to the Cameron County Commissioners Court on July 5th!
SIGN THE PETITION HERE!
CONTACT YOUR CAMERON COUNTY COMMISSIONER BELOW AND FIND OTHER WAYS TO PLUG IN HERE!
- Judge Carlos Cascos- Carlos.Cascos@co.cameron.tx.us
- Pct.1 Commissioner Sofia Benavides- sofia.benavides@co.cameron.tx.us
- Pct.2 Commissioner Ernie Hernandez- ernie.hernandez@co.cameron.tx.us
- Pct.3 Commissioner David Garza- DAGarza@co.cameron.tx.us
- Pct.4 Commissioner David Sanchez- 956-427-8069 (No email available)
- Pct.1 Constable Horacio Zamora- horacioa.zamora.co.cameron.tx.us
- Parks and Recreation Director Javier Mendez- JMendez@co.cameron.tx.us
- Parks and Recreation Deputy Director Joe Vega- JEVega@co.cameron.tx.us
Copy & paste. The last refuge of a lazy blogger. Dream and write your own material. It'll make you and your readers happier. If you must "acquire" somebody else's work, at least put the meat of the report in your own words. You're doing secretarial work now, Barton. Pity.
ReplyDeleteAnon
(The last refuge of a)
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Familiar, but I agree.
Joe Vegas
Thanks for sharing this important info for those of us who really care about our local beaches. Sad that some people just don't get it.
ReplyDeletecrickets...
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