Garbage collection policies frustrate residents
Frustration with garbage collectors is growing in a number of Northern Peninsula towns.
According to mayors in Anchor Point, Flower’s Cove and Roddickton-bide Arm, NORPEN Waste Management’s subcontractor, who picks up the garbage, is enforcing policies inconsistently, creating confusion and frustration for residents.
In particular, the trouble is a policy dictating that garbage any further than 10 feet from the road won’t be picked up.
The mayors say collectors have only started to enforce the policy in the last few weeks.
“For years they were picking up the garbage and now, all of a sudden, we’re too far off the road,” said Anchor Point Mayor Gerry Gros.
Gros has experienced the issue firsthand, saying he recently went three or four weeks without having his garbage picked up.
According to Roddicktonbide Arm Mayor Sheila Fitzgerald, they’ve been told the entire bin needs to be within the 10foot boundary.
Fitzgerald, Gros and Flower’s Cove Mayor Keith Billard each agree this could become a major issue in the winter during snow removal.
If the bins are placed within the specified 10 feet, they might be in the path of plows clearing the roads.
Meanwhile, Gros believes it would be a good idea if they knew exactly when the collectors were going to be there to pick up the garbage.
“If you put the garbage out there and they don’t show up for a couple hours, you’ll be picking garbage all over Anchor Point when the gulls get at it,” he said.
Gros and Fitzgerald believe the public should have been
told the regulation was going to be enforced more stringently. Both say it needs to be enforced consistently.
For example, in Roddickton, Fitzgerald says some weeks the bags were taken and some weeks they weren’t.
In certain cases, bags were tagged and not picked up, but residents weren’t provided an explanation as to why the bags weren’t collected.
“Most people worked really hard to try to comply, but with so much inconsistency, and when garbage piles up over three or four weeks, people become very agitated,” said Fitzgerald.
Residents soon began to take to social media to complain and the Town of Roddickton-bide Arm held a meeting to discuss and address the issue earlier this month.
However, contrary to some media reports, both the RCMP and Fitzgerald have told The Northern Pen that police did not escort garbage collectors in Roddickton earlier this month.
“The media agitated the situation and made it worse for us,” said Fitzgerald.
According to her, the town has never contacted the RCMP on the matter.
She also hadn’t heard of any cases where residents threw their garbage in ditches.
Flower’s Cove Mayor Keith Billard believes part of the problem started with NORPEN employing a subcontractor to pick up the garbage. He doesn’t believe services like that should be privatized.
“When you privatize stuff, that company is out to make a dollar,” said Billard. “And so they’re going to cut corners and not give you the service that really we need.”
He also says they’re collecting garbage in an open truck and sometimes there’s no net over it and trash blows into the roads.
The Northern Pen contacted NORPEN Waste Management Authority for comment, but did not receive a reply by deadline.