Trash is gone, but welcome mat remains
A big heap of illegally dumped trash at a shuttered auto shop is gone, but it won’t be long before another pile appears.
On May 5 we reported on renovation trash and other garbage dumped late at night at a closed-down car repair shop on Markham Rd., north of Lawrence Ave.
The city sent a bylaw inspector to take a look, tracked down the owner and issued an order for the junk to be cleaned up, which happened within a week of our column.
We’ve seen the same thing at industrial areas or secluded properties where sneaky scofflaws know they can get away with it, instead of paying tipping fees at a waste-transfer station.
The common denominator is a lack of fences to keep them out, which is the case at the auto shop. Property owners are forced to pay cleanup costs for illegal dumping and are victimized again, because they cheap out and won’t put up a fence.
Our May 4 column was about a large pipe protruding from a paved boulevard on Leslie St., north of Eglinton Ave., which we found curious because we’d never seen another quite like it.
Many readers recognized it as the base for a fire hydrant and sent us notes saying so, including one guy who said “anyone in the water business could identify this immediately.”
Dr. Siu Chow, who first told us about it, sent us a note recently saying the pipe had been removed. He also told us he found a Google Street View image from several years ago that showed a hydrant in the same spot.
Several weeks ago we reported on copious amounts of mud caked on roads and sidewalks surrounding a townhouse construction site on the southwest corner of St. Clair Ave. and Brimley Rd.
A bylaw requires developers to clean up mud tracked onto the street by construction vehicles, but the roads around it were layered with mud that sent up clouds of dust and crackled under car tires when it dried. We went back after the city ordered the developer to clean it up and found that the mud on the road was barely noticeable, compared to before. 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 or call us at 416-8694823 email jlakey@thestar.ca. To read our blog, go to thestar.com/news/the_fixer. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.