Illegal dumps continue to pop up around the province, often times where it’s least expected — like at Camp Harris, a Scouts Canada Camp in Mineville.
“It’s upsetting for us because we don’t really have a giant amount of funds to deal with all this,” said Robert Chipman, chair of Camp Harris.
“We’re running about 5,500 kids through there a year, there’s kids there every weekend and we have to try and keep it presentable for them so that they’re not playing in that type of debris.”
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The camp has been dealing with illegal dumping for years. They tried setting up a rock wall to deter people from leaving garbage on their property, but that hasn’t worked.
“Illegal dumping for us — about once a month we seem to get something,” said Chipman.
“We’ve had a washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, toilet, hot water tanks, just piles of miscellaneous garbage, cabinets, construction debris.”
Tired of the garbage piling up on their property, the camp is taking things into their own hands. They recently put up a trail cam and have gotten photos of someone who allegedly drove onto the site and left behind a load of wood.
They’ve now turned to social media to try and identify who is responsible and encourage them to clean up the mess.
“Please be responsible and take it to the proper place to dispose of it,” said Chipman. “Whether you’re dumping it on our property or someone else’s property, I think they should be doing the right thing. This just creates problems for everybody.”
Clean up often responsibility of municipality
The province admits they have no idea how many illegal dump sites there are in Nova Scotia. There are 50 conservation officers that look after crown lands. In addition to that, there are 62 inspectors that investigate environmental complaints around the province.
“We encourage people not to dump. I mean, most municipalities and areas have really good waste measures to be able to take away materials, people don’t need to be illegally dumping,” Environment Minister Margaret Miller said.
The city confirms they are investigating the dumping situation at Camp Harris, but finding out who’s responsible for illegal dumping is often very difficult.
“The unfortunate part is that pending a guilty party being found, the property owner would be responsible for cleaning that up, unless we can find someone and charge them back the cleanup cost at a later time,” said HRM spokesperson Tiffany Chase.
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