Superyachts Close Mediterranean Beaches After Their Dumped Waste Washes Ashore

Superyachts are causing a real ruckus in the Mediterranean these days. After a yacht commissioned by Apple founder Steve Jobs crashed into another ship last week, a town on the Mediterranean coast has now had to shut beaches as waste from multi-million-dollar yachts washes up on shore.

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Waste dumped from a $250 million yacht anchored off the coast of France forced the closure of beaches to protect the welfare of residents, reports local news outlet ActuNice. Authorities in Nice shut certain coastal resorts on August 11 as waste including oil slicks washed up on shore. The pollution came from the multi-million-dollar CC Summer superyacht, which was anchored off the French coast earlier in August.

The yacht, which was previously known as Madsummer, is thought to have dumped waste into the Mediterranean sea on August 11. When the waste began washing up on shore, local authorities closed beaches and had to call for support from the fire services to clear up oil slicks left by the superyacht.

A second yacht, which has not been identified just yet, has been blamed for another closure of beaches along the Nice coast on August 2. Now, the town’s mayor has had it with billionaires leaving the planet in a mess for the rest of us to clean up and is calling for a ban on massive yachts mooring off the coast, according to a report from AutoEvolution:

In a recent announcement posted to social media, the city announces that a legal complaint has been filed with the competent authorities. The hope is that there will be some way to block this from ever happening again, Alain Lucas, the Mayor’s chief of staff, says for a local publication. The beaches are public and open to anyone, whether local or a tourist, and this could help keep them that way.

“Enough is enough, we have to react,” Lucas says. He adds that firefighters also sounded the alarm on the presence of the oil slick near the coast.

The environmental impact of sea travel has been in the news a lot in recent years. Gargantuan cruise ships are an easy target for environmental campaigners as millions of tons of gray water are pumped into our oceans by cruise liners every year.

Smaller private yachts are much harder to monitor, however. Because of this, campaigners have argued that superyachts mean “rich are being held by different standards than the rest of the world,” reports AutoEvolution.