ORANGE BEACH, Ala – Orange Beach recently spent $13,000 to survey and mark the mean high tide line along all seven and a half miles of its beaches with an eye toward a more orderly beach.

“It’s chaos on the beach and we’re doing our best to provide some order,” Coastal Resources Director Phillip West said. “We have a constant conflict with our equipment and abandoned tents that are left over night in the areas where we are trying to clean the beach.”

For a safer, more accessible beach, all four-post tents are required to be north of the mean high tide line. This goes hand and hand with the city’s new lifeguard program. Having the larger tents further back allows the five-man crew a clearer view of the water.

Officials said the clearer beaches will also allow easier access for emergency crews when they are needed on the beach.

When the law was passed it also stated that all articles left overnight on the beach must be moved north of that same line. The areas of concern include almost all major condo complexes where people come for a week’s stay and leave articles out to use again the next day.

“You need to have your stuff picked up and moved back behind when you leave the beach every day,” West said.

A walk along any of the beaches in the morning shows quite the opposite as tons of stuff sits in piles around umbrellas left overnight well south of signs marking the line.

“The ordinance says everything has got to be moved north of the mean high tide line at night and right now we’re in the education mode,” West said. “Whether it’s a tent or a big pile of chairs, umbrellas, beach toys and coolers it’s still an impediment not only to sea turtles that are trying to come up on the beach and nest but also our equipment that is trying to clean the beach.”

Also, 100s of rental beach chairs are left south of the line overnight.

“They’re allowed to be within 35 feet of the water and they are supposed to be up to the mean high tide line at night,” West said.

On a recent morning two of the wooden double loungers were actually in the surf.

“A lot of mischief happens at night and it’s hard to stay on top of it,” West said. “You just try to get out there in the morning, and I know the beach service guys do to, whatever the kids or the heavy partyers messed up the night before. It’s a constant battle.”

West said it’s a new law and will be implemented slowly, but enforcement will ramp up as the season goes on.

“We’ll be gradually more aggressive and intolerant of stuff left south of the mean high tide line overnight,” West said. “I think generally people will respond positively to it rather than think we’re just being intolerant and what have you. No one wants to see a cluttered, dirty beach. Nobody.

“Those people who don’t care if it’s cluttered or dirty, well maybe there’s another beach for them somewhere else. We’re going our best while trying not to overreach or turn people off.”

Gulf Shores first began studying a mean high tide line in February of 2009, Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs Grant Brown said.

“The reason for that was when you get these large condominium developments that have many units, you have people come to the beach and they put their tents up on the beach, they leave them there for the five or six days they are there staking out their property,” Brown said. “All of our beach patrol people and other people who need to traverse the beach east and west can’t get around all that high-density stuff.

“If the condo property wants to allow those structures, they can do so on their private property which is north of that designated line.”

Having both towns with the same consistent rules will be a help to visitors, West said.

“It seemed like a good idea to be consistent with our regulations whether you are in Gulf Shores or Orange Beach,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know whether they are in Gulf Shores or Orange Beach. Some people don’t know they’re even in Alabama. They think they are in Florida.”

Gulf Shores, Brown said, is in the process of putting street addresses on its mean high tide line posts so beachgoers have a physical address to give rapid responders in case of an emergency.

“We also sent a letter out recently from our building department reminding all the beach-fronting residents and condominium owners they have to have an address sign identifying their property from the beach side as well as the roadside,” Brown said. “If people are walking the beaches or are on that water side they’ll see an address to be able to get somebody to help them.”