A hotbed of illegal dumping
Leave it to pigs who think the world is their trash receptacle to find the perfect place to illegally dump garbage.
There’s a large industrial building at 1110 Birchmount Rd., just north of Bertrand Ave., comprising small units filled with auto-repair shops and other mom-and-pop businesses.
Behind the building is a strip of land about 10 metres wide, running along a concrete channel identified on city maps as Massey Creek. It is more of a stormwater runoff ditch at that point than a creek.
Ralph Troan emailed to say the area “is used as a rubbish dump,” adding, “it’s a real eyesore hidden away back there . . . There is a ‘No Dumping Sign’ with the usual warning about a fine, but this is a sad joke.”
Troan said he’s taken “notice of this state of affairs because we walk by there fairly regularly on the old railway spur line, which has long been gone . . . This illegal and unsightly dump needs cleaning up and a high fence erected to prevent it from being used again, which is what will happen since it’s just too attractive a spot for illegal dumpers.”
We went there and found the usual mess left by illegal dumpers in a secluded area: old furniture, bags of garbage, broken glass, renovation trash, toilets and even cowlings used to cover street lights.
With nobody around the industrial units at night, they know they can get away with dumping junk that would otherwise have to be taken to a waste transfer station, where they’d be forced to pay tipping fees.
Private property owners are required by municipal bylaw to clean up the mess, if ordered by the city to do so, even if they’ve been victimized by illegal dumpers.
But if they know it’s happening — and how could they not notice the mess on their property? — and want to avoid an expensive cleanup order, they should be sharp enough to take steps to thwart the scofflaws. Status: We’ve sent emails to municipal bylaw enforcement officials in that area, asking them to investigate the situation and issue a cleanup order, before the mess gets bigger. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. To contact us, go to thestar.com/yourtoronto/the_fixer, call us at 416-869-4823 or email jlakey@thestar.ca. To read our blog, go to thestar.com/news/the_fixer.