Keeping it clean
SM BEACH It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.
At the entrance of a beach bathroom, a city maintenance crew is hard at work scrub-bing concrete in an attempt to rid the area of the smell of human feces. On the concrete is a smeared patch of brown, a gift left by one of the homeless people who sleep on the sand nearby.
“When we lock the doors (to the bathrooms), they leave this as a kind of present for us,” said Paul Davis, the jovial, beach maintenance supervisor who seemed to get a kick out of watching a reporter cringe in disgust after laying eyes on the poop surprise. “There’s one guy in particular. I guess he just likes having us clean up after him.”
And so goes the not-so-glamorous, but extremely vital job of making sure the beach is clean every morning for the thousands of people who surf, swim and sun bathe in the vicinity.
The beach is a big money maker for the city as it attracts tourists and locals alike to the downtown area, where they spend millions each year, helping to drive the economy. Without a clean beach, Santa Monica would not be the prosperous city it is today.
“Our studies show that the beach is the number one thing that visitors associate with Santa Monica so having a clean beach is extremely vital to tourism here,” said Dawn Smith, public relations manager for the Santa Monica Convention and Visitors Bureau.
LIFE’S A BEACH Before most people are out of their beds, Davis, who oversees a budget of $2.3 million, and his crew of 11 permanent and 15 as-needed employees are out in their trucks and tractors combing and cleansing the 4.3 miles of beach and 12 public restrooms. They scrub toilets, pick up trash, paint over graffi-ti and repair plumbing, all to protect one of the city’s most valuable resources.
They also replace or repair the rope climb and metal rings at Muscle Beach, walk along the sand and collect trash from visitors as part of a “Beach Valet” program, and collect residents’ garbage along Pacific Coast TIDE FORECAST FOR TODAY IN SANTA MONICA Highway, a job normally performed by Solid Waste Management.
“We go up there and bring the trash cans out to the curb, empty them and bring them back,” Michael Wiley, a seven-year-veteran of the beach maintenance crew.
A typical day for the crew begins at 5 a.m. Equipment operators jump aboard a bulldozer and the new John Deere tractor to redistribute and smooth out the sand, while others gather trash into piles known as “windrows,” and sift out the garbage.
The cleaning must begin as early as possible because the maintenance crew only has a small window — from 5 a.m. to roughly 10:30 a.m. — to work before the throngs of people arrive. It can be dangerous to work with heavy equipment beyond that point, Davis said. One of his workers accidentally ran over a tourist a few years ago who was laying on the sand next to a tall dune. The maintenance worker couldn’t see what was beyond the dune and killed the man. The worker has been on leave since the accident, unable to come to grips with it.
While heavy equipment operators take care of the beach, other workers are doing their best to make the bathrooms look presentable. It’s tough work considering all but one of the bathrooms are nearly 50 years old and are constantly used by visitors and the homeless, some of whom use the showers to clean up each morning.
“Concrete is so porous so it’s hard to get in there and remove all the bacteria and stuff,”Wiley said.“We try to steam wash them every other day, but the smells still linger.”
A big part of the job is removing graffiti. Taggers seem to love hitting the beach and will paint on just about everything, including bathroom walls and ceilings, lamp posts, even the maintenance equipment. The crews are fighting a losing battle, Davis said, because no matter how much graffiti they remove, there will always be more in the morning.
A FAMILY AFFAIR The job is not romantic by any means even though its the beach, workers said, but they get through the days with the support they receive from one another.
“This is really my first family,” Davis said. “I’m with these guys nearly 12 hours a day, six days a week.”
“It really is a family down here,”Wiley said. A quick ride with the crew proves it. As they go from one job site to another, Davis, Wiley and their colleague Ernie Luna crack jokes about the characters they come in contact with on a daily basis, from the homeless woman who can be sweet or an absolute terror depending on how much she’s had to drink that day,to the demanding resident who is always on their case about the Chess Park.
The crew also chats about last night’s Dodgers game and the latest reality TV shows. Family comes up on occasion as does their softball team, which is 10-0 in the Los Angeles league.
“We’re some of the fattest guys out there and were still 10-0,” Davis, a 22-year-employee with the city, said with a laugh. “My daughter-in-law is the best one out of all of us.”
THE HARSH REALITIES OF THE JOB While cleaning up after people isn’t the most desirable job, the crew takes pride in their work and that they are protecting a precious natural resource. They tout the fact that they use environmentally friendly products and bio-diesel fuel for their larg-er equipment and hope to set an example for other beach-side communities.
“It’s such a beautiful place to work, I mean, look at my office,” Davis said as he pointed to the ocean. “Whenever you get stressed out, just take a walk to the water’s edge and watch the waves for a little while … It’s where every employee wants to be.”
Every employee may want to hang out on the sand, but not everyone is suited for clean-up duty. Along with the bad smells coming from the bathrooms each morning, the maintenance crew has to deal with drunk and sometimes mentally ill homeless individuals who can become aggressive.
“For the most part, we get along with everyone,” Wiley said (in Davis’ truck there is a plastic skull that they received from a homeless man as a gift. It is now their mascot). “It’s about mutual respect. We give it and expect it in return.”
And then there are the surprises like the feces. Crews have found some strange things over the years, from a washed-up pig carcass to chickens, cats and dogs with their heads cut off, the apparent victims of ritual sacrifices. Workers have also stumbled upon dead bodies, many of them the same homeless people that they have built relationships with over the years.
“You really do have to take the good with the bad,” Wiley said. “You have to breath in the fresh air because you never know when you’ll get it again.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 23, 2007. Read the original PDF.