Staff from the Quatse River Hatchery and Badinotti Net services teamed up to take out the trash. They spent the day on Feb. 9 cleaning up the illegal dump site that is located near the Quatse River.
Lorraine Landry, Manager of the Quatse River Hatchery, had known of the garbage site for awhile and was working towards forming a work party to get it cleaned up, before asking Badinotti Services for their help.
“I’ve had fishermen come in and complain to me as well, and this is not the first time we’ve done this,” said Landry, adding, “I’ve been here 20 years and this is not the first time I’ve had to come to this exact location and clean this up.”
The garbage was dumped less than a 100 meters away from the Quatse River on a road south of the Quatse Salmon Stewardship Centre and the Pioneer Inn, which connects with Byng Road and runs parallel with the river.
Concerned residents had also been planning a cleanup for the site to take place on Feb. 17, but Landry said she wasn’t aware of that when she planned the Feb. 9 cleanup.
Landry added she had no idea why dumping garbage at this particular spot is an ongoing problem. “They’re just lazy,” said Landry. “Those paint cans are free recycling - there’s no need to be doing that to our environment.”
Candy Nomland, manager of the Quatse River Campground, was also on site to help clean up and noted there was a lot of kitty litter and diapers in the piles of garbage. The garbage pile also included larger objects like box springs, mattresses, couches, and other household items.
Landry said they tried to recycle as much as possible, separating the recyclables, like the paint cans and cardboard from the non-recyclables, and would take them to the 7 Mile Landfill. Dave Hall, manager of Badinotti Net Services, also donated a backhoe, which they used to transport the garbage to dumpsters at Badinotti.
“Lorraine approached us and she wanted to get the project rolling so we wanted to help out as much as possible,” said Hall, adding, “In this day and age you would hope this stuff wouldn’t happen.”
Landry said that despite the fact the garbage was quite a few meters away from the River itself, the contaminates still leak into the ground. “It’s going to kill everything and anything in this area especially all of those paint cans,” she said, adding “I know this was here for awhile but I couldn’t imagine tourists seeing this - that’s bad.”
Landry and the other workers laughed at the irony when they found lawn care products discarded among the garbage. “You would want to care for your lawn, but dump your garbage here?” she said.
Although Landry said she found personal information inside the garbage bags, she noted that “there is nothing that can be done, because unfortunately, it doesn’t prove anything.”
Illegal dumpsites in the Regional District of Mount Waddington can be reported to Operations Manager, Patrick Donaghy at 1-250-956-3301.