Buzz off, litter bugs!
Susan Manyluk looks over some of the garbage left along range road 282 near her home north west of Poplar Ridge.
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Updated: July 30, 2010 8:50 AM
Susan Manyluk isn’t sure why people feel free to dump their trash in her picturesque corner of Red Deer County.
But she wishes it would stop.
“I don’t know what it is that makes people not care,” she said on Monday.
She awoke to find a pile waterlogged carpet, smashed furniture, books, full garbage bags and other trash dumped only 100 or so metres from her home on Range Road 282, where she has lived for more than 30 years just west of Red Deer.
Finding truckloads worth of garbage dumped beside her rural road is a recurring nuisance for her and neighbours on the poplar-lined route.
Manyluk, who runs a family farm with husband Glen and owns HolmeHus Antiques, find piles of garbage half a dozen times in the summer and a few other times over the winter.
Refrigerators, truck camper tops, oil drums, couches, tables, you name it, she has found it. And it’s not only urban dwellers who are the culprits. A pair of larger tractor tires were an unwelcome surprise one day. The screening provided by the poplars is what attracts litterbugs to the road, she believes.
Manyluk and her neighbours keep a sharp eye out for dumpers. When one driver looked suspiciously poised to off-load his truck at the side of the road, she made sure he knew she had taken down his licence number. He left, his truck still full.
Others have confronted dumpers and made them clean up the mess.
Bob Dixon, the county’s senior patrol officer, said rural dumping is an ongoing problem in Alberta.
In Red Deer County, his office fields several complaints a month and officers and other county workers find a few other illegal dump sites on their own.
“It’s very frequent. Often it happens at the end of the month when people are moving and they want to clean out their houses.” Other times, people will find the dump closed and start looking for a secluded alternative.
Dismayed at the amount of garbage piling up along rural roads, the county rolled out a program last year to combat the problem. County residents were encouraged to adopt a 3.2-km (two mile) section of road and undertake a garbage sweep four times a year.
Dixon said dumpers can be fined under the Environmental Enhancement Protection Act. A standard ticket carries a $115 fine, but the case can also be sent to court where a judge can fine up to $1,000.
In the latest incident, a county patrol officer was able to track down the owner of the dumped garbage. The homeowner had paid someone to take water-damaged household items to the dump and had no idea the stuff didn’t make it. Dixon said that’s not the first time he’s heard of that happening.
pcowley@reddeeradvocate.com
