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Public rest rooms needed on Beach

3 min read

To the editor:

My family and I are vacationing here in Florida from another state. After recently having a nice dinner in Fort Myers, we decided to drive out toFort Myers Beach to visit the shops and walk the boardwalk.

As one would expect, about 30 minutes after eating, two of my family members needed to use the rest room. Since none of the beach shops serve food, they do not have public rest rooms. I was referred to the restrooms at the nearby park. Unfortunately, these close at sunset and were unavailable. You have no public restrooms available to the public between the time when the park rest rooms close and the final beach shops close! My only recourse was to go to one of the Fort Myers Beach restaurants, buy two Cokes ($6.00 with a tip) in order to use their facility.

Afterwards, I went to the beach with my daughter for a walk. In the 20 minutes we were there, we observed separately or in groups a total of four men and three women run out to the shore line to squat and relieve themselves! Very obviously, these folks were not going to shell out $6 each to one of the restaurants to use their rest rooms.

You need to make rest room arrangements (not only for the courtesy of serving your tourist guests), but also from a public health standpoint to protect those using the beach from this public health threat. With this level of activity occurring in the off-season (our visit was Aug. 23), I can only imagine the wholesale health-threat this practice must be causing during your busy season! Imagine your visiting families with toddlers sitting on the beach amidst human urine and fecal matter!

I amonly am taking time to write this note because, as a good citizen, Iwanted to make your community aware of this issue. We do not get to this area very often, so it will not likely ever affect me. However, for the good of others,I urge your local city and business leaders to get together to discuss this important matter.

The action to take is obvious – make public rest rooms available in the time between when the public rest rooms in the park close and the tourist-attracting attracting shops and beach stores (which don’t have publicrest rooms) close,as this is when the problem occurs. Perhaps you can make a deal with the park to leave their restrooms open longer? This would likely solve this issue entirely.

You have a wonderful city and we enjoyed our visit.I just hope you can address this important issue for the happiness and saftey of your visitors.

John Blair

Detroit, Mich.