April 12, 2007 — Officials from the National Park Service and the Department of Planning and Natural Resources said Thursday that despite repeated complaints, town meetings, restrictions on camping and tighter enforcement of regulations, campers have again abused the historically important and sensitive area around Salt River Bay National Historic Park.
For the last several years the park service and DPNR have complained of the damage done by campers to the environment and to the priceless archeological resources of the area. In 2005 some campers left behind a ceramic toilet that had been in use as a poor approximation of an outhouse that Easter weekend.
New restrictions on overnight camping have annoyed some campers, who argue that any restriction on camping is colonial exploitation and an affront to Crucian culture.
DPNR, the park service and others say the issue is one of preserving Crucian culture. For the first time this year, overnight camping was prohibited on the five acres that form a point off the shore.
Starting last year, DPNR began stepping up enforcement of rules against littering, digging, brush cutting and driving near the major historical sites in the area. A drive around on Tuesday found the beach area very clean, but quite a bit of debris was stuck in surrounding brush on adjacent private property and near the entrance to the beach.
One campsite was still up Tuesday afternoon and according to National Service Park Superintendent Joel Tutein, they were still there on Thursday morning.
“There is still one campsite on the beach and all the porta-potties are gone, making you wonder what they are doing about that,” said Tutein. “The five acres the government owns looked pretty good, even the beach didn’t look too bad. What looked very bad was the adjacent areas on private property.”
Because most of the trash was on property belonging to absent land owners and camping is already forbidden at the beach, Tutein sees no obvious solution from the position of the Park Service.
“It’s not the property owners, so to force them to clean it up would be hypocritical,” said Tutein. “We have to try to come up with a plan to keep all of the area clean. The public owes it to all those who are not here but are gracious enough to let people drive and camp on their property.
DPNR spokesman Jamal Nielsen was blunter than Tutein. “We have provided extra garbage bins and 3 porta-potties, and still there is trash,” said Nielsen. “Do you know they stole one of the porta-potties?”
Nielsen said he hopes if anyone knows anything about the porta-potty incident or where it is to give DPNR a call.
“This is a very historical site. Not only is it Columbus’ landing site, but there is a pre-Columbian ball court there. We will have to consider whether we can have camping in that area again. These are very delicate pieces of our history and they (the campers) can’t clean up after themselves. It’s very disheartening to say the least,” said Nielsen.
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