Private surveillance no answer to illegal dumping: councillor
Posted May 7, 2012 06:03:09 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Illegal dumping is a major problem for a lot of cities, and it became a higher priority for one regional councillor when it led to recent flooding.
Coun. Tim Outhit says he’s looking at several strategies to combat the widespread and persistent problem – but isn’t interested in a solution under scrutiny in St. John’s, Nfld.
City councillor Tom Hann tells News 95.7 that every spring when the snow melts, it reveals a disgusting mess of garbage that’s been dumped illegally.
The problem is so bad, the city has decided to invest in private surveillance.
“They would go into areas that we know dumping is occurring and if we catch anyone, we’ll charge them and bring them to court,” said Hann. “If you catch somebody, you take pictures and identify the truck, the license plate and the person, then our legal team would take over and take them to court.”
There would be a cost in hiring private surveillance, but Hann thinks the net cost will probably be neutral.
“Right now it costs a significant amount of money for us to be sending staff and contractors into areas where there’s lots of garbage to clean it up,” says Hann, adding security teams would be asked to rotate through problem areas over 40 hours a week.
Outhit isn’t sure if that would work in Halifax, but he has talked to staff about options after the flooding he witnessed in Bedford.
“In this case, the dumping was actually done in a residential area so the residents are going to have to get involved and help with this as well,” he explains. “It’s not like it was done in the middle of nowhere where nobody could see what was going on.”
Outhit says solving illegal dumping issues in HRM will take a combination of education and enforcement.
“Depending on the costs, whether we’d have to go to private surveillance or not I don’t know, but I certainly think that we’re going to have to do both enforcement and education,” he said. “There’s a cost to enforcement, no question, but there’s also a cost to these clean ups.”
He points out the municipality wasn’t on the hook for the cleanup in Bedford in late April, because the trash wasn’t on city property – but he says people have been doing their part to help clean up the mess.
