This Beach Is Being Brought to You by . . .

County supervisors on Tuesday signed off on the first phase of a corporate sponsorship campaign that will eventually bring advertisements to a beach trash can and park bench near you.

Faced with limited funds to improve and maintain local parks and beaches, officials from the county as well as a coalition of five coastal cities are turning to the private sector to help cover costs.

The effort has generated little opposition in Orange County, though Los Angeles County’s aggressive beach marketing program has sparked complaints by some activists who say it commercialized the open space.

General Motors is launching the Orange County effort by donating $2.5 million worth of trucks--42 over five years--in exchange for the title of “Official Marine Safety Vehicle of Orange Coast Beaches.”

The board on Tuesday also approved a deal in which Adopt-A-Highway Maintenance Corp. will purchase 500 beach trash cans, placing sponsor advertisements on half of them.

Larry Paul, the county’s coastal facilities manager, said officials are also considering plans to place “rest stops” along some trails in the county’s regional parks that would include some advertising.

The sponsorship program is similar to one already used extensively in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. But the scope of the county’s program could be much bigger given the thousands of acres of parkland, marinas and coastline it maintains.

Several environmental groups including the Surfrider Foundation have expressed support for the plan, saying it provides needed money for maintenance of parks and beaches.

But others are wary about the idea.

“It would really depend on what [the ads] looked like,” said Fern Pirkle, president of Friends of the Irvine Coast. “It’s one thing if it’s a small logo placed on the side somewhere. . . . But I don’t think a big advertisement is appropriate.”

Similar sponsorships are coming under fire elsewhere in the state from other groups such as the Sierra Club, which argue that the advertisements take away from the natural beauty of the beach.

Local Sierra Club spokesmen could not be reached for comment.

Last year, activists successfully petitioned the California Coastal Commission to refuse Los Angeles County’s request to place nearly 50 sun shelters and kiosks along the beach that included poster-size advertisements.

Some coastal commissioners said at the time that beaches and wilderness parks were a natural refuge that needed protection against commercialization.

Paul said the county and coalition of cities--Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and San Clemente--are sensitive to these concerns and have vowed to make the sponsorships as unobtrusive as possible.

The signs would appear on those cities’ beaches but probably not in their parks.

“We definitely don’t want to be overly commercialized,” Paul said, noting that each sponsorship will be approval of the board as well as the local city councils. “We want to avoid that image.”

Orange County isn’t likely to propose full-scale beach structures like the kiosks and shelters that raised the Coastal Commission’s ire, Paul said.

The advertisements will mainly consist of corporate logos.