{"id":157844,"date":"2023-06-02T15:05:57","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T19:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=157844"},"modified":"2023-06-05T09:20:50","modified_gmt":"2023-06-05T13:20:50","slug":"tantramar-resident-calls-for-clean-up-of-dump-sites-in-newly-expanded-municipality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/tantramar-resident-calls-for-clean-up-of-dump-sites-in-newly-expanded-municipality\/","title":{"rendered":"Tantramar resident calls for clean up of dump sites in newly expanded municipality"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Tantramar council started discussing its new Dangerous and Unsightly Premises by-law, which it passed in May, Kerry Simpson was paying attention.<\/p>\n

Simpson has long been bothered by a number of sites in the new municipality where she hikes and walks with her daughter's dog \u2014 sites that feature loads of garbage or discarded items. Often these sites are on private land, and Simpson wonders how, if ever, they will get cleaned up.<\/p>\n

CHMA took a walk with Simpson just off the Cape Road outside of Dorchester, to see one such dump site, where thousands of tires have been strewn throughout the woods and overgrown with brush.<\/p>\n

The piles poke up through the shrubs and undergrowth sporadically, and stretch far down the old road, alongside a spring creek. \u201cWhen you start counting them one by one,\u201d says Simpson, \u201cthere\u2019s thousands. There\u2019s got to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Another pile of long since discarded tires. Photo: Erica Butler, May 2023<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The tires were likely dumped here a few at a time, but now there\u2019s an overwhelming number, and it\u2019s hard to imagine anyone taking on the job of removing them all. But even so, Simpson thinks it needs to happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just worry that one day you\u2019re going to have a lightning storm, you\u2019re going to have just a piece of glass that hits the sun the wrong way\u2026 And there it goes,\u201d says Simpson. \u201cIt\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tires take a considerable amount of heat to start burning, but when they do, they are notoriously hard to extinguish. A fire at a tire recycling plant in Minto in 2019<\/a> lasted for days, despite efforts of firefighting crews. But it\u2019s not just fire risk that concerns Simpson. She\u2019s also worried about what the slowly degrading tires might be releasing into the ground and water surrounding them.<\/p>\n

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Tires release chemicals into the environment as they degrade. Photo: Erica Butler, May 2023<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

When dump sites like this one are left to fester, it\u2019s bad news for the environment, says Sam Rogers, habitat restoration and monitoring worker with Fort Folly Habitat Recovery.<\/p>\n

Rogers has been helping organize dump site cleanups with funding from the province\u2019s Environmental Trust Fund, removing 15 tons of garbage from roughly 15 different sites in the past two years alone. And they will be back at it again this year. Rogers says things like tires can cause problems for nearby waterways and wildlife.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it takes a long time for these to break down, they do,\u201d says Rogers. \u201cAnd they release the chemicals that they\u2019re comprised of into the soil and into the water. They just create a concoction of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogers says other items routinely dumped can pose equal or greater challenges. \u201cA lot of the time we find appliances, and we\u2019ve seen leakages,\u201d says Rogers. \u201cWe\u2019ve come across what looks like oil changes or other things, and people just leave the bottles out to release chemicals wherever they are into the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Members of Fort Folly Habitat Recovery and the Petitcodiac Watershed Alliance after a clean up at Johnson\u2019s Creek in Moncton in August 2021. Image: Facebook<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Some of the sites that Rogers and the Fort Folly team help clean up are historical dumps, like the tire graveyard Simpson found. But some are also still active, with people, for some reason, choosing to dispose of their detritus in the woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to say it,\u201d says Rogers, but it \u201cmay be laziness. It\u2019s a lot household garbage, sometimes even bagged, that\u2019s just left in the ditches, and they\u2019ve been torn into by wildlife.\u201d She\u2019s also seen children\u2019s toys, constructions debris including boards with nails and shingles, and at one point, what appeared to be the contents of a university dorm room.<\/p>\n

Rogers says she\u2019s not sure whether the 15 sites that she and Fort Folly Habitat Recovery have cleaned up are the tip of the iceberg or not. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to say if you make a dent,\u201d says Rogers. \u201cI know we clean up a lot, and we get tons of waste that comes out of those areas. But then you return next year, and there\u2019s more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a large problem,\u201d says Rogers. \u201cAnd there\u2019s so many ways around it that it remains an issue within communities that is difficult to address if you don\u2019t have the resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

New app coming to report dump sites<\/h2>\n

One new project funded this year by the Environmental Trust Fund could help paint a picture of just how big the problem is. ECO 360 (the Southeast Regional Service Commission department responsible for disposing of all the waste collected in the southeast) has received a $30,000 grant to put towards helping communities identify and clean up illegal dump sites.<\/p>\n

Director Sebastian Hultberg says the first phase of the project is to expand ECO 360\u2019s app current smartphone app, to allow for people like Kerry Simpson to report dump sites. The idea is that \u201dyou\u2019ll be able to snap a photo, get the coordinates,\u201d and the information will be uploaded to ECO 360\u2019s database, says Hultberg. \u201cAnd once we have the data, where are the dumps that exist, then we can look at how how we can help,\u201d says Hultberg.<\/p>\n

ECO 360 already has one service in place to help communities tackle dump sites, the ECO 360 cleanup trailer. \u201cIt\u2019s a trailer that community groups can can sort of lease for free,\u201d says Hultberg. \u201cThere\u2019s all the tools and protective equipment that you would need, and supplies to help clean up one of these sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be working with the Department of Environment and Local Government on this to help share the data that we get with them so that they get a better better picture of what what it looks like as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Public land, private land<\/h2>\n

Most of the dump sites identified and cleaned up by Fort Folly Habitat Recovery are on public land. Dumping grounds on private land add an extra layer of difficulty, in that there\u2019s the permission of the property owner to consider, and also their potential responsibility in the matter.<\/p>\n

Kerry Simpson thinks the new town of Tantramar can play a role in helping facilitate the cleanup of new and historic dump sites across the new municipality, even if they are on private land. Her plea to councillors at their May meeting, just before they approved the town\u2019s new Dangerous and Unsightly Premises bylaw, was, to paraphrase, \u201cuse it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe write these bylaws for the people who are going to follow them,\u201d says Simpson, \u201cand we hope that the other 5% fall in line. I think we need to start looking after the 5% instead of relying on the 95% that follow them, and start writing these bylaws for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently Tantramar has just one permanent full time bylaw officer, the same number that Sackville had before amalgamation. But with a hugely expanded territory, enforcement of the Dangerous and Unsightly bylaw could be more of a challenge than it already is.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Simpson thinks that enforcement needs to be accompanied by possible supports for facilitating clean ups. \u201cWe have to do our research,\u201d says Simpson, \u201cand we could look at it on a case by case basis. So if there is mental illness behind it, then of course that needs more of a community effort than enforcement. And if it\u2019s just someone blatantly refusing to pick it up, then that to me is an enforcement [issue.] Force them to pick it up or suffer the fines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate the fact that it probably started years ago, when we weren\u2019t so concerned about the environment,\u201d says Simpson. \u201cBut now we have more education on the environment and we should be doing everything we can to clean it up, and ensure that our trees and our land and our animals are going to be here 20 years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d hate to see huge devastation from something that we know is here, and we can do something about. At this point, it becomes our responsibility,\u201d says Simpson.<\/p>\n

Currently the province asks people to report dump sites to the Environment and Local Government regional offices. For Tantramar, that\u2019s the Region 3 office located in Moncton, at (506) 856-2374 and elg.egl-region3@gnb.ca.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Tantramar council started discussing its new Dangerous and Unsightly Premises by-law, which it passed in May, Kerry Simpson was paying attention. Simpson has long been bothered by a number of sites in the new municipality where she hikes and walks with her daughter’s dog \u2014 sites that feature loads of garbage or discarded items.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":157847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,222],"tags":[10337,26710,9067,6058,15469],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157844"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157954,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157844\/revisions\/157954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157844"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=157844"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=157844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}