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Community Corner

A Day at the Beach

Edmonds citizens showed up in droves for a day of beach cleanup.

On the fortuitously warm Saturday of last weekend dozens of people from the Edmonds community gathered along the waterfront for the annual Spring Beach Cleanup and Low Tide Walk. Falling on the day after Earth Day, the cleanup was a great way to continue the eco-friendly altruism, and with weather in the mid-60’s, the beach was a definite destination of choice.

“These areas are all marine sanctuaries,” said Ranger Susan Morrow, who has held her position for seven years. “Thirty years ago these beaches were quite polluted and in terms of marine life, quite dead.”

In recent years however, the city decided to return the beach to good health. “The Rangers are a part of that education,” Morrow explained, “and now this area is a very rich, diverse environment.”

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On Saturday, the Rangers oversaw the annual Beach Cleanup, which happened at Olympic Beach, Brackett’s Landing and Marina Beach. Volunteers clad in boots and gloves, with buckets on their arms, showed up and scoured the shoreline, collecting trash as they travelled across the beach. There were individuals, families, children and even several Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.

One volunteer, Patty Cheng, a teacher at the Shoreline Coop Preschool, was combing the beach for trash and looking for the rest of her cleaning group. The preschool embarks on philanthropic events such as the beach cleanup in order to give the children exposure to community service at a young age.

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“We all enjoy the beach, and it’s nice to have this resource for the Seattle area,” Cheng said. “We think [these events] are good models for our preschoolers. We think it’s good to show them the act of community service rather than just talk about it.”

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