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Vol. 14, No. 14, Wednesday, February 20, 2019 www.LamontLeader.com
Lamont ditches used as dump BY JOHN MATHER Garbage is piling up on Lamont County roads and ditches and the sheer volumes of it are concerning county officials. Councillor Wayne Woldanski reported to council Feb. 12, the problem was people were dumping construction waste, fridges and mattresses on county ditches. “These are things the St. Michael Landfill charges for,” stated Neil Woitas. Woldanski said waiving fees for this sort of material was a non-starter when he attended a regional landfill commission meeting. Woldanski is the County representative on the landfill commission. He felt public works could keep records of when and where materials were being dumped and possibly they could take that evidence to future meetings to see if the commission then might consider waiving fees. He said with the heavy snowfall this winter, the problem would really start showing up during spring clean up. “It’s really a lack of pride,” Woldanski stated. “And it’s very hard to charge people dumping because you can’t determine where the garbage came from unless you catch them in the
act.” Lamont County public works director Chris Valaire agreed the dumping is becoming a serious problem. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it,” he stated. “Maybe folks just don’t take pride in living in the County.” He said individuals just dump garbage all over the place. “We’re going to start doing some sort of trend analysis,” he said. “We’ll be mapping out the frequency of dumping and where it’s dumped.” “We want to find out why this is happening,” he added. “Is it in a proximity to the landfill? Does the landfill close too early? We’re going to look into all of that.” “We take pride in our County and anytime our public works guys see garbage they pick it up,” he said. “I don’t know whether it’s happening because of the downturn in the economy, but it seems to be happening more and more.” He said the role of public works staff isn’t to be garbage pickers, so the plan going forward is to put the location information into a geographic information system … a mapping system.” Valaire said huge rolls of carpet, home renovation materials and household goods are the main items being
dumped. He adds he doesn’t know if the problem has increased since the landfill changed its hours a few years back and started charging for larger items. Landfill commission manager Linda Davies states the landfill has done a remarkable job of cleaning itself up since it repurposed from a dump to a regional landfill. She said the staff at the landfill is educated and it has been recognized by Alberta Recycling as being the best landfill in the province for a population 5,000 to 25,000. “We’re pretty proud of that,” she said. “You must remember most landfills in the province fall into that population category. Other Counties come and study our policies and procedures to run their landfills. “Every county has garbage in the ditches,” she added. “This is not unique to Lamont County.” “I go to provincial meetings and that is all they talk about,” she said. She adds she has all the minutes from the landfill meetings since back in the 1980s and “there’s always letters about garbage in the ditches.” “So, it’s not unusual,” she said. “It’s not abnormal, it’s not nice. We do try to pick up as much of the garbage in the
ditches when we’re out and about and then we mark it down as to where we found it.” She adds at the landfill, under provincial regulations, everything that comes in has to be tracked for its source. “We know where some of these dumping spots are.” The landfill operates standard hours from Tuesdays to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. In 2015, before it started charging for mattresses, the landfill operators started counting the mattress coming in and between March and December of 2015, Davies states 894 mattresses and box springs were dropped off. It started charging for heavy items in 2016 and charges are $12 for mattresses or box springs. The first year after charges were implemented about 500 mattresses and box spring were dropped off. Davies said they now average 300 to 400 mattresses annually. Construction and demolition materials are charged at $40 per metric tonne. Valaire admits he’s constantly getting complaints from councillors about garbage in ditches and with spring coming he knows the problem will get worse. Continued on Page 2
Family Day Fun Mundare CAO and curling skip, Colin Zyla, left, gives some tips to nine-year-old Hannah Moravec on how to throw a rock. Hannah’’s mom, Lenka, is ready to man the broom. Both came to the Mundare Curling Club on Feb 17, as part of the family day activities and neither had ever been on the curling surface before.
Tom Waskul, of Bruderheim, drills holes into wooden discs as he helps his daughter, Camryn, 5, build a wooden snowman. The craft event was part of the Bruderheim’s family day events.