Major cleanup planned for Outer Ring Road

Volunteers needed to help remove rubbish from the roadway on June 11

The notorious mess around the Outer Ring Road will finally get a good cleanup soon, the Department of Transportation and Works announced Friday afternoon.

The rubbish-strewn roadway has been the topic of some frustration for many who travel along it regularly, with one Twitter user suggesting it should be renamed “Dump Road.”

“... I have never seen so much garbage, are we looking to be the dirtiest place in the world?” wrote another Twitter user.

Transportation and Works Minister Al Hawkins said it makes him frustrated, too.

“Very frustrated, very disgusted, actually, that in 2017 we still have that amount of garbage on our roads, particularly the Outer Ring Road,” he said.

Hawkins attributes a lot of the debris to trucks travelling to the dump without securing their loads. Police have been cracking down on that problem in recent weeks, but until it’s cleaned up, it will be hard to tell if it’s making any difference.

“There’s not much point in doing a massive cleanup if, in fact, we’re not going to be able to curb the amount of garbage on the Outer Ring Road, or any of the roads — so it’s important to us to ensure the (enforcement) piece will go hand in hand with the cleanup,” Hawkins said.

During the last major cleanup in 2015, it’s said that 110 tonnes of garbage was picked up — a “mind boggling” amount, Hawkins said.

“Probably within a month or so, we found that there was a significant amount of garbage back there again,” he said.

He said last year, department staff cleaned up bit by bit, but were often maxed out on different projects such as filling potholes.

This May, St. John’s Mayor Dennis O’keefe said he was shocked no cleanup was in the works for that highway or for Pitts Memorial Drive, and councillors shared the sentiment.

“Because these are the main arteries leading into the capital city. These are the arteries that take travellers, tourists (and) ourselves in and out of the city. And they are provincial roads,” O’keefe said.

Since then, the city and province have put together a collaborative effort to get rid of the debris along with Clean St. John’s, Metrobus and Eastern Waste Management.

On June 11, from 8 a.m.-4 p.m., the organizations will work with volunteers to clean the Outer Ring Road from Kenmount Road all the way to Logy Bay Road. Barricades will be erected at points in between, and volunteers will be brought by bus from Confederation Building to various points on the highway. People 15 and younger must be accompanied by an adult.

To register to volunteer or to find out more, visit bit.ly/ Orrcleanup.