Nov 1 2024

We had 7 people attend our Oct 26 community meeting in person, with others joining on Zoom. Meeting notes follow; one other update of note first:

Sara and Gene met with MBA General Manager Monique Simon on Oct 29 to provide an overview of Friends: issues we care about, potential initial projects, and requests for collaboration. Monique Simon was vocal about her wishes that Magens remain in its natural state, and also mentioned that she’s paying close attention to the chair area and its boundaries. She suggested we get on the MBA board meeting agenda to give a presentation to board members, which we are following up on.

Oct 26 2024 meeting notes:

Calls for action:

• Join working groups

• Attend social trash walks

  • Much of the trash is by the chair area; are they cleaning up themselves? Don’t frequent that area, so don’t know for sure, but it seems the vendor is not sufficiently cleaning the area. Have seen them put out chairs where there is already trash without picking it up. See Magens staff pick up a lot of trash from the beach in general.

• Suggest events to add to http://calendar.friendsmagens.org

• Review Friends website and provide feedback/suggestions - https://www.friendsmagens.org

• Help draft talking points/position paper

  • Focus on community access and environmental sustainability

  • Especially looking to cut down the text we have for brevity

• Write an editorial or similar-style facebook post

  • We have a topic bank, also open to other topics

• Not Magens-specific: The USVI Comprehensive Land & Water Use Plan ready for review at https://www.planusvi.com/, provide comments by Dec 5 [If you don’t want to read the entire thing, but do want to find sections most relevant to Magens, search for “APC”, “particular concern”, “anchor”, etc.]

Next meeting

• Aiming for the last Saturday of every month, so Nov 30 10AM, near shed 4 + zoom [Note: This is Thanksgiving weekend; if you can’t attend but would attend a different date/time, let us know.]

General discussion:

• About Friends

  • We provided some background on Friends, primarily for the benefit of Senator Marvin Blyden who was in attendance

  • Want to work with MBA/board, the way it’s structured it’s really up to them whether or not they incorporate our input

  • Issues we care about/projects we intend to pursue

    • Plant labeling/environmental education

    • Activities for kids (school field trips) & seniors (AARP fitness) 

    • Anti-littering & reef safe sunscreen

  • Comment that we need to become a 501c3 and will be able to get money

    • We’re waiting on the business license which we filed for

  • Catalyzed beginning of the year around mooring plan & chairs/commercialization (discussion of chairs and tours introduced this year)

  • Drawing on Mac Davis’ proposal

  • Fairchild and history of the beach as being for VIers, Friends as liaison between MBA board and community 

  • Need more transparency from MBA board - financials - where does the money go?, vendor agreement details (e.g., how many chairs? where on the beach?), mooring plan details (how many moorings? where?), what happens at trade shows MBA attends? long-term vision for the beach?

    • Aug 29 2023 legislature post-audit and testimony are available on the legislature website

• Protecting the bay

  • Largely outside the jurisdiction of MBA

  • Magens Bay is designated by CZM as an APC but not aware of a specific plan for Magens yet

  • Moorings are better than anchors & anchor lines damaging bottom, but still encourages boats, no boats would be even better

  • Who is checking for dumping/oil leaks? DPNR doesn’t have the resources to enforce

  • Restrictions on adjacent watershed properties - runoff

  • Need to save beach for future generations

  • Sen Blyden has a bill with many of these protections for Magens (and other beaches) - we would love to take a look at this/provide feedback

Quick opinion polls:

• Are these things we want to consider advocating for? [For those not at the meeting, we can continue these polls/discussion over email.]

  • 1: No jetskis, waterskis, electric surfboards, or similar noisy and/or wake-generating watercraft, no loud music on boats within the bay

    • Yes, falls under DPNR & Coast Guard jurisdiction

  • 2: Designating a section of the beach as a non-commercial area, or something similar?

    • Yes

    • Beach will be touristy during cruise ship days/hours, but what about the rest of the time? Chair rentals pretty much exclusively for visitors. How about returning the existing commercial areas to their natural state at the end of the day (e.g., picking up trash, putting away chairs) and not setting up as early in the morning?

    • Weekends (especially 3-day weekends) focused on personal/family use. Or non-ship days.

  • 3: Environmental risk assessment?

    • There were some assessments a while ago, pre-covid.

      • [Looks like these were cultural resource surveys done in 2016, (Source article), don’t see any indication that there was an ERA though.]

    • Advocate for assessment and sharing the results with the public.

  • 4: Total smoking ban within the park? Small dedicated smoking area? Status quo?

    • How to define smoking? Does it include vaping?

    • Problem of education - visitors don’t know they can’t smoke in the main areas, tour guides/taxis don’t tell them, not many signs or hard to read, no smoking in the whole part would be easier to understand than current rules

    • Problem of enforcement - Who is going to enforce? Never going to stop smoking entirely

    • Fire hazard - People hiding in the bush to smoke increases fire risk

    • Decided this issue isn’t central to Friends, and that we will leave this to MBA and see where it goes