10 Tons of Dog Poop to Be Removed from Hamptons Beaches
In a joint effort, the Hamptons Police Department, Hamptons Sanitation Commission and Hamptons Municipal Board is seeking to remove 10 tons of dog poop from local beaches before next summer.
The trilateral agreement was signed Wednesday after an environmental report from Brown & Greene Technologies (BGT) found that irresponsible dog owners have left some 15 tons of canine excrement on beaches between Montauk and Westhampton. While not initially visible, BGT explains that this disconcerting amount of feces has begun to form a new sedimentary layer just beneath area beaches’ sandy surface.
“We’ve already ordered 11 bulldozers and six backhoes to begin excavation work in Montauk and Westhampton, and crews will then move east and west until they meet in the middle, somewhere around Sagaponack,” Hamptons Municipal Board spokesman Bruce Wolffe Johansson said on Friday. “We hope to complete the job as the offseason winds to a close, before the summer population returns and demand for our various departments increases,” Johansson continued, noting, “The budget would not otherwise allow for the work.”
“As teams work to clear away all these turds, our officers will be paying much closer attention to what’s happening on the beaches,” Hamptons Police spokesman Larry Hirsch said. “We will no longer turn a blind eye to those miscreants who choose not to clean up after their dogs,” he added. “And that includes the people who let their dog off leash and pretend not to notice when it’s squatting nearby—this is simply not acceptable, not anymore.”
It should be noted that the various Hamptons municipalities have made picking up after dogs as easy and convenient as possible at area beaches. Most, including popular locales such as Mecox, Flying Point and Fowlers, among others, have poop bag dispensers set up right where dog owners step onto the sand. Further, Southampton Village beaches offer two-ply Mutt Mitt waste bags, which are about as luxurious as dog poop bags get.
“This cleanup is a major operation that puts a lot of pressure on our employees and taxpayers,” Johansson said. “We will not take it lightly if people don’t begin seeing the error of their ways and start changing how they do things in the Hamptons,” he continued. “This rash of poor manners and bad behavior is not limited to ‘summer people’ or weekend visitors, and it cannot happen again.”
To put it simply: Clean up after your dog.