YORK, Maine — The town’s parks and recreation department is doing all it can to rid Long Sands Beach of an invasive seaweed, but it remains a stinky nuisance for beachgoers and residents.
“This week, we’re inundated with seaweed,” Mike Sullivan, director of the town’s parks and recreation department, said.
He told the Board of Selectmen on Monday it’s “2- to 2½-feet thick” in several places.
Town employees have been raking the seaweed off the dry sand down to the ocean to be removed by the tide, Sullivan said.
“By the end of the week, a lot of it had gone,” he said.
However, what remains attracts flies and has a particularly noxious odor because it includes an invasive species from Japan, according to Sullivan and selectmen.
The invasive species emits a rotten egg-like odor when dry, so employees are trying to keep the seaweed wet to prevent it from becoming “as stenchy as it could,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan has fielded numerous complaints this week about the smell and what’s being done, he said. The main question, which he also heard Monday night, was why can’t the town haul it away?
Sullivan and selectmen said state environmental laws prevent them from doing that.
“Many years ago the town tried to haul it off, and the [Department of Environmental Protection] got involved,” Sullivan said.
In hauling off seaweed, sand is also taken away, which is against DEP regulations, Board of Selectmen Chairwoman Mary Andrews said.
Also, Sullivan said, it would be difficult for front-end loaders to remove seaweed during the busy tourist season.
“It would be a showstopper for the beach,” he said. “What we did was manage best we could. What I hear about the new seaweed, it’s only going to get worse.”
The invasive red Asian seaweed, called Heterosiphonia japonica, has moved north up the coast and was found in Cape Elizabeth in 2012, according to the Bangor Daily News.
Matt Bracken, a marine biology professor at Northeastern University, told the BDN the invasive species reproduces quickly, is less susceptible to being eaten by animals that keep seaweed in check and, where it has been found, the native species has declined.
“It is the worst smelling stuff ever,” Selectman Ron Nowell said.
While state law prevents municipalities from displacing the sand, “a private citizen can come down with pitchfork and basket,” Nowell said.
Resident Helen Rollins suggested garden clubs could take it away as compost or that it could somehow be recycled.
Resident Mike Dabiere suggested the seaweed be tilled back into the sand.
Nowell said that was tried years ago at Short Sands Beach. Officials there ended up needing to close one end of the beach because of the “putrefaction process.”
Also, he said, the town is prevented from digging up the beach.
Resident Crawford Zetterberg said there is a lot of debris and trash in the seaweed, which is adding to the odor.
Sullivan disagreed, saying the smell is from the seaweed.
Zetterberg said he organized, with the Surf Rider Foundation, a beach cleanup Saturday, in which an estimated 30 people participated.
“It definitely made a difference,” Zetterberg said. “We got 80 pounds out in two hours. … I’m hoping right after Labor Day weekend to get another one organized.”
Sullivan said the town clearly needs a policy on what to do when the beach gets inundated with seaweed.
“We’re not prepared for it,” he said. “We don’t come close to having the manpower to sift through that seaweed. As we move forward, we need to address what to do with it. It would make it a lot easier for me to answer questions.”