Would You like to Adopt our Beach?

The ODEAB is looking for a group of residents who would like to participate in the Alliance for the Great Lake’s "Adopt-a-Beach" Program three times per year. This is a great opportunity for friends and families to do something to help the beach, while learning about our most precious resource – Lake Michigan.

All around the Great Lakes, schools, families and community groups have adopted beaches. These groups periodically gather to remove litter, monitor beach health and conduct an at-home water quality test. They then work with the Alliance to log the information onto a website database, which the Alliance uses for pollution prevention advocacy and education.

Some of you may be familiar with this process. For the past several years, Ogden Dunes has been participating in the Annual International Coastal Clean up Day held each September. This program expands that effort in Ogden Dunes to two more times per year, taking place in early and mid-summer, then again in September.

Participants would need to dedicate approximately two hours each visit and would work in pairs to collect and tally litter; and fill out a Routine Visit Report that asks questions about conditions that day such as air temperature, wind direction, time of last rainfall, and other pertinent information.

If you are interesting in joining with this effort, please contact Susan MiHalo at spsmodin@verizon.net or any of the ODEAB members. Once we have a group of dedicated volunteers, we can arrange a training event.

Note: this would not be an effort to clean the entire beach and would not replace overall clean up efforts. It's more of an effort to monitor the state of our beach and track it's condition over time.


For more information on the Alliance for the Great Lakes “Adopt-a-Beach” program, visit http://www.greatlakes.org/Page.aspx?pid=525.