Surfside wants beach party promoter to pay

James Kruppa picks up trash Tuesday left from a massive weekend beach party in Surfside. The village of 482 residents is looking to the organizers to recover the expense of cleaning up, which could take several days. less James Kruppa picks up trash Tuesday left from a massive weekend beach party in Surfside. The village of 482 residents is looking to the organizers to recover the expense of cleaning up, which could take several ... more Photo: Brett Coomer Photo: Brett Coomer Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Surfside wants beach party promoter to pay 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

SURFSIDE BEACH - Surfside Beach will take legal action if necessary to recoup the costs of cleaning up after an unauthorized beach party that overwhelmed the city and left one party goer shot dead, Mayor Larry Davison said Tuesday.

Revelers left tons of trash on the streets and on private property, broke a sewer line and stole more than a dozen street signs, Public Works Director Pete Gutierrez said. The cleanup began Monday and is expected to take several days, he said.

"They just created havoc on the beach," Gutierrez said. The cleanup will cost thousands of dollars that this city of 482 residents will have to scrounge for, he said.

"It's going to cost us a bunch of money," Davison said. Gutierrez said it was too early to provide a cost estimate.

Davison said the village has identified the man responsible for promoting the party and will ask him to pay cleanup costs. The mayor declined to reveal the man's identity, but said he was associated with the texasbeachparty.com website.

The promoter took extraordinary measures to thwart village efforts to discourage people from attending a beach party organized without the required village permit, Davison said. Because so many people learned about the party through Twitter, "We had somebody do a rebuttal site Friday on Twitter saying it wasn't going to happen."

The promoter got Twitter to shut the account down, Davison said.

"We're going to get the district attorney to see if there was criminality," he said. "In this country you should be held accountable for stupid stuff like that."

Estimates of people on and near the beach Saturday during the party ranged from 13,000 to 20,000. "You better say 20,000," said Gutierrez, judging from the amount of debris.

The party was further marred by two apparently random shootings, one resulting in the death of Derrick Milam, 25, of Houston. In a separate incident, two Houston teenagers were wounded. All three victims were walking when they were shot for no apparent reason. Police have no suspect in either case.

The violence combined with revelers urinating behind houses, parking on private lawns, blocking driveways and clogging streets to make the Texas Beach Party, as it was called on Twitter, into a thoroughly unenjoyable weekend for Surfside residents.

About 70 residents packed the village council chambers Tuesday to vent their displeasure over the party. One resident showed the council photos of the packed crowed, including one of a topless woman dancing.

Others complained that the crowd made it impossible for emergency vehicles to come to the aid of residents. One man said he pulled his pistol to keep revelers off his property.

The unusual amount of trash made for an even worse aftermath, Gutierrez suggested. Village crews on Monday carted away 400 plastic bags of debris, far more than the 150 plastic bags usually gathered after a Fourth of July weekend, one of the most crowded beach weekends of the year, Gutierrez said. He said he had to triple the number of cleanup crews.

Even after the busiest weekends there is relatively little trash on village streets, but last weekend was different, Gutierrez and the mayor said. Davison said more people were on the streets than on the beach, strewing them with trash. A crew had to be called in for the first time to clean up streets after a weekend, Gutierrez said.

harvey.rice@chron.com