How much sand is carried up from the beach each day? Ask any mother who has loaded up some kids, boogie boards and toys from the beach into the back of a van and she will tell you “a ton.” Ask the Maintenance staff and they will tell you that they shovel about twenty-five gallon buckets of sand from the sand trap each summer month.
Every morning someone from Maintenance will hose down the beach shower area, pushing the sand to the beach walkway. The sand remains on the walkway until the County washes some away and the winter rains send the rest back to the ocean.
This morning “hose down” prevents much of the sand from going down the shower drain and into the sewer line But twenty-five gallon buckets of sand still go down the shower drain. To keep the sand from going into the sewer system, and to get a permit for a beach shower, the South Coast Water District required the installation of a sand trap.
Once a month, less in the winter, two members of the Maintenance staff clean the trap. This involves one person going into the trap and shoveling out the sand for the second person to bag and load into a truck. This dirty, contaminated sand then goes to a trash dump and not back to the ocean.
—Jack Christiansen
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