North Sydney dump reopens today.
Police asked to help control traffic, ensure social distancing
NORTH SYDNEY — Earlene Macmullin’s phone should be ringing a bit less in the coming days after the Cape Breton Regional Municipality announced Wednesday it will reopen its Northside dump this weekend.
The CBRM solid waste department’s only satellite site usually opens its gates on the first Saturday of the month, so area residents can drop off garbage they’d otherwise have to haul to the Sydney landfill. However, it had been closed for the past several weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic — much to the disappointment of area residents who had been asking District 2 Coun. Macmullin every day when it would be back in service.
“I get at least one or two calls about it daily from people asking ‘When is it opening?’” she told the Cape Breton Post. “It’s almost like a mini holiday on the Northside, the first Saturday of the month when the dump is open — especially at this time of year.”
CBRM solid waste manager Francis Campbell said the dump located on Ferris Street off King Street in North Sydney is always a busy spot and
he expects it to be even more congested today. He said police have already been asked to help control traffic and ensure residents follow social-distancing regulations.
“We have a plan in place,” Campbell said. “We’re going to limit the number of vehicles on the site at any given time just to make it easier to maintain the distancing. People should expect delays if it’s as
busy as it usually is.”
Campbell said the Sydney landfill has been extremely active since it reopened for the first time in a month on April 28.
“We’ve been lined up for a month since we opened — probably 80 per cent of the days we’ve been lined up,” he said, adding that even though tipping fees from businesses have dropped off sharply, more residents seem to be bringing stuff to the site on the Sydney Port Access Road.
“Just from observation it looks like a lot of people are bringing in material that they would normally put out for the heavy garbage collection. And I think a lot of people are at home and they’re getting the opportunity to do a job they’ve been putting off. It’s combination of everything but it definitely is an increase in the amount of residential traffic, for sure.”
For her part, Macmullin said she’s relieved people in her district now have a place to legally get rid of their trash.
“Last month it was closed, yet there was still a lineup to get in and people still dumped garbage there, unfortunately. We had to make efforts to get that cleared out,” she said.
“As long it goes to a dump and not in the woods somewhere, that makes me happy.”