Charmane DiNardi didn’t have to walk far along the shoreline at Crescent Park Beach before coming across a piece of evidence to support her claims.

Glinting in the intense sunshine of the Friday afternoon sun — only 10 feet or so from where a mother and her children were playing and trying to keep cool — was a shard of clear glass, hidden in plain sight among the pebbles and plant matter embedded in the sand.

A short stroll north and south from the point where beachgoers descend the stairs from Crescent Park to hit the sand of the public beach revealed that this find was not simply an isolated incident. This reporter found upwards of a dozen pieces of glass in about 15 minutes of beach combing, many right in the path of where someone would casually stroll with a child or a dog as they walked along the main stretch of sand.

Back towards the seawall, where grass and large boulders create a plethora of nooks and crannies, more refuse was seen throughout. Bottles (soft drinks and alcoholic, glass and plastic, broken and in-tact), were joined by snack wrappers, columns of cigarette butts sticking out of the sand near a makeshift fire pit, and (certainly the winner for grossest find of the day) three opened condom wrappers, complete with the box they came in, sitting scandalously atop a large rock.

It’s something that DiNardi, a retired schoolteacher and now a resident of the nearby Crescent Park Manor, says has become a troubling trend recently.

“This is not how it should be,” she said. “We once were a culture that respected our environment…It seems as through those basic considerations aren’t being followed now.”

DiNardi, a native Rhode Islander who described herself as growing up in the water throughout the state’s multitude of shorelines, is a breast cancer survivor and now lives life with a significant hearing impairment. She takes seriously the things that bring her joy, because she knows how preciously short life can be.

“It took my life savings, not my life,” she says with a wry smile while discussing her bout with cancer.

DiNardi finds great joy in bringing her two grandsons to the beach, where she imparts upon them the importance of not just letting garbage sit to become someone else’s problem. She said that she tries to get the beach every day she can when the weather is nice, and will usually bring a garbage bag along with her.

But recently, the uptick in the amount of litter has been noticeable.

“I had been coming every night, but it got to a point where I couldn’t keep up with it,” she said.

She said that she was spurred into trying to take greater action when she and her grandsons came across a used syringe among the other debris.

“That was the thing that unnerved me the most,” she said.

DiNardi said that she had reached out to Mayor Bob DaSilva’s office, as well as the city parks and recreation department, but hadn’t heard anything back from them as of the Post meeting her at the beach on Friday. She said that she understands the city cannot be solely responsible for keeping the beach clean, and that residents need to have a role in being responsible with their trash and not being selfish.

“This is my home. I really do love this place,” she said. “I think if more of us started thinking that way, it would make a difference. We can’t leave it all up to the city, either. Let’s all get back to respecting our environment.”

Still, she said that some additional attention from the city wouldn’t hurt.

“I am so proud of how we’ve progressed, and this just feels like we’re taking a step backwards,” she said. “You’ve got to maintain what you’ve got. This is the pride of our city.”

DiNardi said if what the city recommended was to create a dedicated citizens committee responsible for cleaning up the beach, she’d volunteer to be its chair right away.

“I am more than willing to be a part of the solution,” she said.

Mayor says help is on the way

Shown images from the brief walk along the beach and told about DiNardi’s grievances, Mayor Bob DaSilva said in an interview on Monday that he was “shocked” at the sight of the trash that had accumulated.

“That people would leave that kind of stuff out there in the open, all those bottles and everything else, that's disgusting,” he said.

DaSilva said that he spoke to the parks superintendent, Jose Andrade, and asked if the beach was being combed as regularly as it was supposed to be; which the mayor said was supposed to happen once a week.

“He was apologetic and informed that we have been short staffed in the parks department,” DaSilva said, stating that the city has a small parks department tasked with all the upkeep and cleaning of 44 parks across the city.

DaSilva said that the city was in the process of on-boarding three full-time workers for the department within the next week or two, and would be looking into part-time workers as well to help keep up with the demands.

“We need to get more people out there in the park,” he said. “He [Andrade] is absolutely going to be on top of that.”

DaSilva said that in addition to getting more help to maintain the area’s cleanliness, the overall situation at Crescent Park Beach should see major improvements once the second phase of an ongoing project to shore up the beach’s coastal bluff along its southern span resumes in the fall.

DiNardi noted during the interview that the bluff had a lot of dangerous-looking trees hanging on by exposed root systems, which is one problem that the project intends to correct. Trees will be removed and a resilient wall of stones and vegetation will be put in place to help prevent stormwater runoff from entering the water and damaging the shoreline.

“What I'd love to see happen is after we get phase two of the bluff protection project done, which will involve pushing back the bluff and creating a bigger beachhead, I think you're going to see a completely transformed situation out there with a nice clean beach,” DaSilva said. “We could have probably started it earlier, but I didn't want to have any disruption during the summer concert series and during the summertime when people are enjoying the the shoreline.”

On Tuesday, DaSilva shared images of parks department employees cleaning up trash at the beach on his Facebook page.