Garbage gathers on Porters Lake Road
Residents in the West Porters Lake Road area aren't happy with a collection of garbage that has accumulated along the road, just off Highway 107.
“A lot of community residents are quite angry about this because if you walk about 10 feet down the road, there's a brook that feeds into the main lake, Porters Lake, and that lake feeds into the ocean,” said Adam Conrod, who has lived in the area for nearly four decades.
The makeshift dump near the Bellefontaine Road intersection consists of scrap metal, ventilation air system pipes, a toilet, election signs, a few cables and “regular garbage that shouldn't be there,” Conrod said.
“A lot of people are very angry about it,” said Conrod, who posted pictures on Facebook. “I just posted it last night. I've seen it there for about a week or so. After that week, when I first saw it, they started adding more to it. The toilet wasn't there but now it is.”
Conrod said it's a “repeat event,” that garbage has been dumped there for a number of years and he suspects the same person of being the repeat offender.
“The province cleaned it up a few times but the person keeps going to the same location.
"We think we know who it is but we never actually seen him dump it there.”
Conrod said Keith Colwell, the Liberal minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the MLA for Preston-dartmouth, owns property across the road from the dumping place.
“A few years back, in 2012, they dumped stuff on his property and he was on the hook to clean it up,” Conrod said.
David Hendsbee, who represents the area on Halifax regional council, said “there's a lot of garbage dumping going on everywhere.”
Hendsbee said the garbage doesn't appear to be on private property and its proximity to the road would likely leave it in the provincial Transportation Department's jurisdiction.
“It depends on if it is in the road right-of-way or not.”
Hendsbee said if it's just scrap metal it may not pose much of an environmental risk.
The councillor said the nearest landfills, the only landfills on the Eastern Shore, are in Musquodoboit Valley and Sheet Harbour.
“It's constantly an issue,” Hendsbee said of illegal dumping.
He said the municipality is trying to change bylaws on owner responsibility so that “if we can find any identification in the garbage, we'll go back after that person.”
Garbage on property has always been the responsibility of the property owner.
If identified, the dumper could be charged by the RCMP with littering or illegal dumping, Hendsbee said.
Conrod offered one more possible explanation for the dumping.
“I say it is somebody just frustrated,” he said. “People don't know who to turn to to get rid of stuff and the city doesn't want to take it.”