Beach bins given earlier rollout

At a recent Joondalup council meeting, two regular beach users since the 1960s said they spent a lot of their time on the sand picking up rubbish.

One resident asked if the bins could be placed on the beach in September, rather than the usual rollout starting in the second week of October.

At a previous council briefing, Cr Mike Norman asked the same question of City infrastructure services acting director Michael Hamling.

Mr Hamling said it would be difficult to roll the bins out earlier because “resources are tied up doing turf renovation work for sports grounds in the seasonal changeover” but the City could look into it.

At the meeting, while discussing a draft Sorrento coastal foreshore reserve management plan for 2015-2020 Cr Norman moved an amendment to request the bins be placed on the beach each year between September 1 and May 1.

“The cost of extending the duration of the bins on this highly-used section of beach by a total of a couple of months is relatively low,” he said.

“It will be even more important if a shark net is installed at this location due to an anticipated increase in beachgoers.”

It was unanimously approved and the draft management plan endorsed. It is the second of five local plans to be produced under the overarching coastal foreshore management plan, which was endorsed in 2014 with the Marmion plan endorsed last February.

The Sorrento plan is for maintenance of the reserve and has 32 actions to be implemented in the next five years.

The plan was developed with input from the Joondalup Community Coast Care Forum and Friends of Sorrento Beach and Marmion Foreshore.

Cr Norman thanked the “thousands of volunteers over the last 15 years” for their work to restore the Sorrento foreshore area from being classed as “poor to very poor” in 2002 to “very good” in 2015.

He said the Friends group recently received a Coastwest grant to extend its work to area covered by the the City of Stirling and the Stirling Natural Areas Coastcare group.

“It will result in a larger, continuous block of fully restored coastal foreshore reserve,” he said.