Avalon's beach is open again
A stretch of shore was closed for clean-up after medical waste was found there Saturday.
The beach in Avalon, closed Saturday when medical waste washed ashore, reopened yesterday, luring bathers to its freshly cleaned sand.
Borough officials walked the beach before dawn and gave it "a clean bill of health," said Murray Wolf, captain of the beach patrol. The beach reopened at 10 a.m.
Lifeguards had shut down more than a mile of shoreline when beachgoers found intravenous needles and cotton swabs on the sand. Wolf said about 150 items reached shore between 10:30 a.m. Saturday and 12:30 p.m.
That forced the closing of a stretch of beach from Ninth Street to 28th Street, as fire company and rescue-squad workers scrambled to collect the materials. County officials also helped in the clean-up. No one was injured.
The source of the waste was under investigation yesterday by the state Attorney General's Office and the county prosecutor's office.
Yesterday, Kate Peyton was on the beach with her husband, Travis, and their three children. She recalled the scene a day earlier when a lifeguard yelled: "Everybody out of the water! They found syringes in the water."
Peyton, of Berwyn, said the family later saw three small needles on the beach. Shortly afterward, she said, the beach patrol ordered everyone off the sand. "We were really bummed out," she said. "We were really grossed out, and our kids were grossed out, too."
After the clean-up, as beachgoers flocked back to Avalon's sands, the Peyton family returned and staked out a place by the surf. By mid-afternoon, the beach was full.