Use your Christmas tree to help prevent erosion along the Brazoria County coast this year!
Discarded pine trees will be used to line the dunes along Surfside Beach during Dunes Day on Saturday, January 20, 2024. They will be staked down along the foot of the dunes and the needles will collect blowing sand. This is the most natural and effective way to provide coastal defense during tidal events and tropical storms.
“Dunes Day is an opportunity to divert used, natural Christmas trees from going to a landfill and instead they can be used to grow dunes that help prevent erosion on the beach,” said Rob Booth, president of the Save Our Beach Association. Dunes Day has provided a way to reuse Christmas trees for the betterment of beaches since the 1980s.
The Christmas trees have helped the beach exponentially and serve as a major building block for the dunes, Brazoria County Parks Director Bryan Frazier said.
“We will take all of the discarded Christmas trees and lay them out on the beach, so when the wind blows, the sand will build up dunes,” Frazier said. “It’s worked pretty well over the years. There’s stretches of the beach where at least some of the dune growth you can point back to being enhanced by the Christmas trees over the years.”
Trees can be donated at the Surfside Beach main entrance, at the foot of the State Highway 332 (SH 332) bridge into the village . Trees should be free of all decorations, tinsel, and flocking.
Volunteers who would like to help stake down the trees are welcome to join Dunes Day from 9 a.m. to noon on January 20, 2024. Volunteers will meet at Surfside Jetty Park, 101 Parkview Drive in Surfside Beach, and be assigned in groups to sections of the beach. SOBA and Brazoria County will provide food for lunch.
See the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/166832436452796/
