Theft, vandalism, stolen cameras, and even a stolen port-a-potty are but some of the issues plaguing West Nipissing’s rural landfills.
So detailed Elizabeth Henning, West Nipissing’s Director of Infrastructure Services in a recent update to council.
“We’ve seen a lot of incidents happening at our rural landfills,” Henning said. Incidents have been increasing over the past four years, she added. “These costs are adding up for the municipality.”
Verner, Field, Lavigne, River Valley, Kipling, and Sturgeon Falls all have landfills. They operate on limited hours, “and we don’t have staff there that often,” Henning clarified, “and they are remote locations,” and she wanted to make council aware of what’s been going on.
Henning told council that police were contacted about various incidents. Asked if there were cameras on site, the Sturgeon Falls landfill has some, as it’s close to hydro, and some game cameras had been installed at others.
“Unfortunately, they were stolen,” Henning informed council.
Trouble at the landfills “is almost a weekly occurrence,” noted Jay Barbeau, West Nipissing’s CAO. Particularly tempting is the electronic waste, but the Municipality has recently consolidated that collection. Previously, such waste as TVs and computers could be left “at all sites, we were trying to be customer friendly that way,” but the good intentions led to increased vandalism.
Moving the electronics to one site “seems to have assisted a little bit.” However, Barbeau noted that just a few weeks ago, the Kipling landfill “was ransacked again.”
The incidents amount to “interesting phenomena,” Barbeau admitted, “and we’re doing what we can to address it.”
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
