NEWBURY, MASS. (WHDH) - North Shore officials are worried that nicer weather will bring out-of-towners to crowd area beaches despite orders for social distancing, and say closing those beaches is a possibility.
Newbury Police Chief Michael Reilly, who is also the town’s emergency management director, said Sunday’s warm weather drew far too many people to the beaches of Plum Island.
“Yesterday was basically the first nice beach day since we put parking restrictions in effect, and it was a complete disaster,” Reilly said.
“The beach was as crowded as a crowded holiday weekend in the middle of summer … it’s a hint of what we have to look forward to, it’s going to get really bad,” Reilly said.
At the beginning of the month, Reilly closed all private parking lots on Plum Island and neighboring Newburyport had also closed its parking lot.
But there were too many clusters of people at the beach, and officers wrote dozens of citations Sunday for people illegally parked on the main road — and most were not local residents, Reilly said.
“There were a lot of New Hampshire and New York license plates, people that were ticketed were from all over,” Reilly said.
Town officials met Monday and ordered more No Parking signs placed by the beach, and Reilly said parking enforcement will be more aggressive — and that officials could close the beach during the pandemic.
“We understand that people have to get out of the house and we understand that people need to do things but this isn’t the time to go to the beach, it isn’t the time to socially gather.”
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