A big problem has been piling up on the back roads of North Battleford.
City councillors saw some shocking pictures of garbage on the side of the roads in North Battleford during their council meeting on Monday.
Director of operations Stewart Schafer circulated the photos as part of his monthly report for July. He had noted that during the month public works crews had been doing routine litter pickup and street sweeping. Unfortunately, his report noted, they also had to be involved in picking up garbage that had been dumped on the back roads of the city.
“That’s an awful lot of garbage,” was the reaction of Mayor Ian Hamilton to the pictures, taken at two different sites.
Schafer said people were dumping the garbage illegally, and added that if they find information it’s passed along to municipal services.
There was considerable comment that followed. Councillor Kelli Hawtin particularly expressed her outrage about the dumping situation, an issue she has raised at council before.
“I’m just wondering if we could start to think about some sort of strategy to try to curb this,” she said. Hawtin made the point that not only was it foregone revenue because it wasn’t going to the dump, but it was costing the City money cleaning it up. As well, there was an environment impact.
“I would like to see us talk about a proactive approach,” said Hawtin, who suggested possibly opening up the dump for free a couple of days a year to allow people to dispose of items.
City manager Jim Puffalt pledged to talk to other communities to see if that might help, adding the problem may be due to people refusing to pay the tipping fee at the landfill. He added the garbage is not coming from the city.
He still stressed the need to catch people in the act. Fining people, Puffalt added, “would go a long way.”
