The mayor of Keremeos is fed up with the mess left by transients camping in the village. Manfred Bauer will be asking the province to intervene further to ensure the campers will no longer create a landfill by the banks of the Similkameen River.
Manfred said last fall’s cleanup efforts collected ‘truckloads’ of trash.
“When you see at the end of the year, the garbage that they leave, you just roll your eyes. It is mind-boggling,” he said.
This year, Natural Land Resource Officers (NROs) from the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations started giving warnings.
The Ministry said the campers have been polite and receptive.
It may have encouraged some campers to clean up their act.
On Tuesday, garbage was neatly bagged. Those who have been camping said they make an effort to keep their temporary home tidy.
“If nobody does it then we live in a dumpster. Nobody wants to live in a dumpster, right? We love the water, we love the nature here,” said Camille, a fruit picker who is in between work.
But Bauer said when the campsite gets overcrowded during harvest, it gets out of control.
“I think there are some people who behave better in terms of discarding garbage. But overall, the amount of people camping — we get up to 150 people in there — it is just not manageable.”
Bauer said the Similkameen River is home to 15 fish species, some of them endangered. He believes campers are threatening aquatic life and at-risk animals living in the area.
Currently, people can camp on unregulated crown land for up to 14 days.
“According to staff, there is no logistically and manageable process to identify who has been on any particular site for 14 days. Any vehicles are parked well away from camping locations,” said a Ministry spokesperson in an email.
Bauer is asking the B.C. government to prohibit camping within active riverbeds throughout the province.
He will be presenting a resolution on this issue at the Union of B.C. Municipalities conference in September.
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