Trashing Our Beaches

OK everyone, please read this carefully. If you’re coming down to Vieques, the water here is perfectly safe to drink. Puerto Rico is not Mexico. Our tap water will not make you sick and you won’t catch any exotic diseases from the food here either.

Yesterday I was out catching bait at Playa Grande when I ran into this group of volunteers doing a beach clean-up for Fish and Wildlife. It was barely noon and they already had the bed of their Dodge Ram pickup overflowing with full trash bags. Playa Grade is one of my favorite beaches on the island and I’ve always bitched about the garbage I find down there. Seeing this was confirmation of a serious problem.

Most of the tourists who visit the island are quick to point out that the locals don’t care about littering, and they’re right, to a degree. Way too many of the folks born and raised here have the habit of tossing their beer or soda cans right on the ground right wherever they finish them. It’s an infuriating sight for those of us who grew up with “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute” drilled into our heads as school kids. Thankfully, this is finally making its way into the schools on Vieques and the next generation will start picking up after themselves.

But let’s get back to this picture of Playa Grande for a minute. The trash down there is a different story. Playa Grande beach is too far out of town and not good for swimming so the locals rarely go there. The trash you find at the high tide line is what washes up from the ocean currents, and half of the volume of all those trash bags is empty water bottles. Bottled water is an environmental disaster and an unbelievable scam, and the only people who drink it here on Vieques are the tourists. If you see an empty Heineken bottle you can blame a local, but an empty Evian bottle, which is what you see too much of on our beaches, that’s your fault. And why anyone would pay good money for something that is essentially free is beyond me.

So if you’re headed this way and still afraid of drinking the water then buy yourself a portable Brita or something like that. And if you’re still a little spooked, dump half a bottle of rum in your water, alcohol is great for killing germs.