A light blue surgical mask floats in traffic on the New Youngs Bay Bridge. City trash cans overflow with takeout containers from restaurants.

On the North Coast, the coronavirus pandemic can be tracked through more than just test results.

Since Clatsop County reopened the economy — lifting lodging restrictions, reopening beach and park accesses — tourists are back at what seems like summertime levels. But with most events still postponed or canceled and many public indoor activities restricted, locals and visitors alike are flocking outdoors.

They are leaving a stream of pandemic-specific debris behind.

The trash shows up on beaches, on trails and even in city sewer systems.

Summer is the high season for trash in Cannon Beach, and this year is no different, though aspects appear unique to the coronavirus.

As restaurants shifted from inside dining to to-go options, the city increased the scheduled routine of trash can emptying, said Karen La Bonte, the public works director.

Carryout “added a tremendous amount of trash volume to the cans around town,” she said. As businesses began ordering different types of supplies — to-go disposable containers and the like — the amount of cardboard brought to locals-only recycling drop-off sites also went up.

Astoria had to request more frequent collections for trash cans on the Astoria Riverwalk. The cans fill up quickly with carryout food containers in particular, said Jonah Dart-McLean, the city’s parks and recreation director.

“There’s definitely a lot more garbage out there,” he said.

Uptick in wipes

Many city sewer systems across the county are also dealing with a significant uptick in wipes. Health officials had advocated the use of wipes to easily and quickly sanitize hands and surfaces, but the wipes are not flushable — no matter what it says on the packaging, said Jeff Harrington, the director for the Astoria Public Works Department.

When they are flushed away, the wipes plug up sewage pumps at the city’s wastewater treatment plant. To try to stem the tide, the city recently fabricated and installed a new screen at a manhole at a pump station .

Crews clean the screen twice a week, Harrington said. It is a process that requires three people and takes about three hours.

“(It is) more of an inconvenience and is additional work that we never had to do in the past before wipes became popular,” he said. But, he added, cleaning the screen is far easier than cleaning the pumps.

The city is considering installing new pumps that do not plug as easily.

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Overall, Cannon Beach is taking on additional costs for pandemic-related work, such as extra signs, hand sanitizer, masks, modified work schedules to minimize exposure between employees and more overtime. All together, this required budget adjustments, La Bonte said.

She remains philosophical about the situation.

The Public Works Department experiences few slow months anyway, and the challenge of keeping the city aesthetically pleasing and waste systems in good operational order is part of what makes the work exciting to La Bonte.

“Of course, when you throw in a pandemic, it adds challenge to that journey,” she said, “but if it weren’t the COVID, it would probably be something else.”

Masks

Single-use and plastic items were already a concern to environmentalists. Their concerns have grown as precautions around the coronavirus increase the use of such items as businesses and individuals try to limit possible sources of contamination and exposure.

Single-use plastic shopping bags, barely out of stores for six months after a statewide ban hailed by environmentalists went into effect earlier this year, returned to the North Coast during the pandemic. Supply chain issues and temporary restrictions on reusable bags at some stores left many stores short on paper bags.

Meanwhile, disposable masks are well on their way to becoming the new marine debris, said Jesse Jones, the Astoria-based volunteer coordinator for CoastWatch, a program where volunteers adopt segments of the Oregon shoreline to monitor for natural and human-caused impacts.

Increasingly, her volunteers note light blue disposable surgical masks among the usual collection of beer bottles, cans and plastic debris.

The masks are readily available for anyone who may not want to deal with a washable cloth mask or prefers a disposable option, Jones said. With masks required at indoor public places, they are also the type of mask commonly handed out at store entrances to customers who did not bring masks of their own.

Though the masks are disposable, they are not recyclable. Carl Peters, of Recology, the company that handles garbage and recycling collection for Astoria, is not aware of any recyclable masks on the market.

Crush of visitors

Pandemic-specific trash has become a significant problem at state parks on the North Coast. Most of the parks reopened in June and were immediately hit with a crush of visitors — a tide that has yet to ebb. 

Along with the high visitor numbers, park managers are seeing even more trash this year. Masks and takeout containers are everywhere. Wipes and bits of used toilet paper litter the sides of popular trails.

“Pleas to pack-it-in, pack-it-out are being ignored,” said Ben Cox, Nehalem Bay unit manager for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. “Pleas to tread lightly on the land and don’t overcrowd are similarly ignored.”

Public health guidance suggests outdoor activities are lower risk for contracting the coronavirus. State officials still caution people to limit unnecessary travel, recreate close to home, and, if outdoors, maintain social distance and wear masks if they are in crowded public areas. 

But Cox estimates visitation is up by at least 10% at popular sites south of Cannon Beach: Oswald West State Park, Hug Point and Arcadia Beach. The surge in popularity is occurring not only in the middle of a pandemic, but also at a time of unprecedented low staffing levels, he noted.

The parks department, funded by state lottery dollars, faces a potential budget shortfall of $22 million between now and June. In addition to staff layoffs, the budget restrictions meant many seasonal workers were not hired. Local parks are operating with skeleton crews, park managers say.

The department last week announced it will charge out-of-state residents higher fees for overnight stays through the rest of the year “to remind people to stay as close to home as possible while enjoying the outdoors and to provide much-needed support for the Oregon state park system” according to a statement from Lisa Sumption, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department director.

However, the fee change will not discourage visitors to the overtaxed parks and recreational sites like Oswald West and Hug Point that do not offer camping and require no entrance fee.

“Oswald West, Arcadia Beach and Hug Point are constantly jammed,” Cox said. Once the parking lots are full, he said, people park wherever they can find room.

The Oregon Department of Transportation erected barriers and strung “Do not enter” and “Caution” tape along highway shoulders ahead of parking lot entrances to keep people from parking there if the lots are full. 

“People just park a little farther away,” Cox said.

At Short Sand Beach in Oswald West State Park recently, groups maneuvered around each other on the Falcon Cove trail above the beach, some slipped on masks as they passed, others carried no masks at all. Several discarded masks hung in ferns off to the side of the trail.

The tiny trash can at the trailhead was already overwhelmed with trash, topped by a collection of empty plastic Starbucks cups.