Government

Town: Garbage removal costs total over $108K so far this year

Managing Southold Town’s beaches has become an expensive task and the question now is how to reduce those costs, according to town officials.

Last year, the cost of removing garbage at town beaches, including landfill fees and fuel costs, amounted to more than $160,000, according to public works director Jeff Standish, who presented a slide show of overflowing garbage cans at various beaches — including Bailie Beach, Pequash Beach and Nassau Point Beach — at Tuesday’s Town Board work session.

The photos showed discarded beach chairs propped against trash cans, and one showed a cooler left behind.

“For the life of me I cannot figure out how some self-entitled prima donna thinks it’s the taxpayers’ job to throw out his cooler, his umbrella, his broken beach chairs,” the supervisor said.

Mr. Russell said there’s a misunderstanding that the town manages only a handful of beaches, noting that there are “dozens and dozens of road ends that all need to be attended to as well.”

The department of public works collects garbage from the beaches five times each week, Mr. Standish said. To date, garbage removal expenses for 2017 have reached more than $108,157.

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Courtesy photo: Garbage piles up at Southold Town beaches. (Credit: Southold Town Department of Public Works)