Are July 4 beach fireworks celebrations worth the cost?

Celebrating America’s independence on July 4 is a cherished annual celebration in our country with family picnics, baseball games, parades, sparklers, culminating with the local fireworks show.

In Grays Harbor, and specifically Ocean Shores, July 4 means thousands of people heading to the beach and shooting off fireworks.

The July 4 holiday brings tens of thousands of people from all over Washington state to spend the day on our Grays Harbor beaches shooting off thousands of dollars of fireworks and in the process causing logistical and environmental challenges.

July 5, which the Surfrider Foundation refers to as the “dirtiest beach day of the year,” the beach is littered with thousands of full garbage bags and trash leaving them for local groups, city employees, residents and concerned visitors to clean up the mess.

On July 9, Twin Harbors Waterkeeper helped with a beach cleanup at Ocean City State Park. Even though this beach had already been cleaned up after the July 4 holiday, a shocking amount of fireworks trash remained on the beach, and was collected by volunteers.

As reported by LeMay Grays Harbor, the 2025 July 4 holiday had 84,900 pounds (42.45 tons) of fireworks debris and other trash removed from Grays Harbor beaches (Ocean Shores, Pacific Beach, Westport and Grayland), with almost 51,000 pounds (25.5 tons) from Ocean Shores alone.

This waste is hauled almost 300 miles away from Ocean Shores to Columbia Ridge Landfill, which has a $130.49/ton tipping fee.

In 2024, Surfrider Foundation reported that Washington’s beaches generated nearly five times more garbage by weight than beaches in California and Oregon combined. This is a pretty sad fact about a state that prides itself on its environment.

While the beaches may appear to be clean after initial cleanups have taken place, one still finds fireworks debris throughout the year. This trash includes plastic and microplastic, which is continually picked up by residents at subsequent beach cleanups. Some of it is washed out to sea to add to marine debris already in the ocean or blown into the rack line where it accumulates with other debris.

Small fireworks debris and associated trash have environmental impacts on seabirds and shorebirds where in extreme cases may cause death due to starvation, since they can’t digest plastic.

Fireworks have been linked to negative effects on human health, especially for young children, the elderly or those with respiratory ailments with an increased risk of headaches, sinus irritation, and asthma attacks.

Many fireworks contain toxic metals such as strontium, barium, and lead that can easily be breathed into the lungs and pass into our blood stream. Further, the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that close to 10,000 injuries such as severe burns and loss of extremities occur on July 4 with 40% of these occurring to children under 15.

Every July 4 first responders must respond to one or more fireworks that start dune wildfires. Thanks to our firefighters, they have been able to extinguish these fires before any damage to private property.

While it hasn’t happened yet, there may be a year when our first responders won’t be able to extinguish a dune fire in time before there is a loss of private structures.

It is not too far-fetched to think that a situation like the recent California or Maui fires could happen here in Ocean Shores.That appears to be a risk our community leaders are willing to accept.

Supporters of continuing these coastal fireworks displays use an economic argument that local businesses’ livelihoods rely on the money these visitors spend in our community to survive. The problem is there is little data to support this argument. The Fourth of July would still bring many visitors to our coastal communities regardless of whether they could shoot off their own fireworks or watch a community sponsored fireworks show over the ocean.

Let’s see more data supporting an economic reason to continue shooting off beach fireworks

A secondary argument is that shooting off fireworks on the beaches has been a long-standing tradition in Washington. Long-term cultural and social traditions are important to many people, and these should continue, but not at the expense of risk to life and property.

Like any tradition, these can change to a safer alternative, where it lessens the burden on the local community, decreases or eliminates the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and protects human health and the environment.

Some coastal communities have already transitioned to safer alternatives such as going to choreographed drone displays. There is even some discussion about eliminating fireworks from the beaches.

We are not proposing any firework bans since there needs to be an open discussion before any bans are attempted. To make an informed decision on whether to continue the status quo one needs to weigh the benefits (economic lift) and impacts (costs to the community, wildfire risk, beach pollution, human health, etc.) these activities have on the local community.

So, the question we ask is — is it worth it? Hopefully this letter will begin the conversation to make that informed decision.

Bruce Rittenhouse

Ocean Shores

Lee First

Twin Harbors Waterkeeper

Rochester