NEW MINAS, N.S. — Gerard Hamilton shakes his head at the sight of another man’s trash littering the end of Jones Road.
Hamilton, municipal operations manager for the Village of New Minas, has a message for the culprit(s): pick it up.
“People are always throwing their waste down here,” he said July 3, noting the two new piles of garbage left at the cul-de-sac at the end of the road.
“This is a problem because it’s a dead end,” Hamilton said, adding that it can be disruptive for those wanting to use a nearby gravel road and walking trail.
Hamilton refused to play the blame-game but noted that he had a few ideas of who is ditching the garbage, most of which appears to be household waste.
“It looks like someone was cleaning their home. There are bicycle parts in one of those piles,” he said. “Instead of just putting it to the curb on garbage day, they decided, ‘no, I’ll just dump it down at the end of Jones Road.’”
What gives Hamilton further conviction in his theory on the origin of the abandoned trash is the fact that it’s being dumped after hours.
“You come down here at nighttime, and it’s very quiet. Aside from that one apartment building over there, the rest of the buildings here are just offices, so yes, something’s going on,” Hamilton said.
Although he admits he doesn’t have any proof that anyone local did the dumping, Hamilton said he’s contacted the landlord of the nearby building.
If it’s not properly addressed, Hamilton said he will be in touch with Valley Waste Resource Management, requesting that an inspector deal with the issue.
To the dismay of Hamilton and the others living on the street, there has been a recent uptick in illegal trash deposits dropped off at the end of Jones Road.
“Over the last few years, it’s been the odd one, here and there, throwing out a bag of garbage. It seems like this year, it’s been more often than others.”
There’s still time for all involved to make amends.
“You have an opportunity to clean this up and make it right. There’ll be no charges if you do it within a reasonable amount of time,” said Hamilton, relaying a message for those responsible for the mess.
“If that doesn’t happen, I’m going to bring in Valley Waste, and they have rules and regulations on how to approach this the right way. They’ll hire someone to clean it up and charge whoever is responsible.”
Andrew Garrett, communications manager with Valley Waste, said the company has a bylaw officer on staff, enforcing the regulations related to illegal dumping of garbage.
“The officer would investigate, look for names and try to figure out where it came from,” Garrett said. “If successful, the offender would be fined or ordered to clean it up – they’d receive a summary offence ticket.”
The responsibility with fall on the property owner if no names are found, Garrett added.
