Coastline of the United States
The United States has more than 88,000 miles of tidal shoreline. Approximately 4 percent or about 3,800 miles of this shoreline is maintained by cities and various state and federal park systems as public tourist beaches. The remainder of these coastal areas belongs to private land owners, local, state and federal governments.
None of these other entities have any money in their budgets allocated to clean up after the general public and maintain these 84,000 miles of coastline as a trash free environment. With no public funding available, trash has been accumulating in many areas for 20 plus years. Along some rural coastlines, there is trash burying trash in what should be pristine areas.
|Lengths, statute miles|
|Total Atlantic Coast||2,069||28,673|
|Total Gulf Coast||1,631||17,141|
|Total Pacific Coast||7,623||40,298|
|Total Arctic Coast||1,060||2,521|