For Ryder Scales and Tanner Share, picking up illegally dumped trash in Langley Township is a full-time job.
The two man crew say they can barely keep up.
“It’s funny, this’ll be cleaned out today. Tomorrow, we’ll be back here,” said Scales, while picking up an old television, bale of hay and bags of trash along River Road–one of the popular spots for illegal dumpers.
“People know where they can get away with it,” adds Share.
Whether in a wooded area or out in the open, the pair say the problem is increasing. The Township of Langley estimates illegal dumping has become a $400,000 a year problem– the amount it costs them to clean all this up.
“Our taxes went up this year for solid waste alone 4.6 per cent in order to help finance this kind of garbage pick-up,” said Councillor Kim Richter.
“There’s no need for this.”
It’s a problem plaguing lower mainland cities. In Surrey…the cost of illegal dumping has been climbing steadily since 2006, peaking in 2011 at close to a million dollars.
However, Richter says there’s been a recent spike in illegal dumping in Langley, and she believes it has something to do with the Metro Vancouver tipping fees that increased in April.
It now costs $80 to dump a load heavier than nine tons and anywhere from $109 to $720 if it’s less than that.
“People are just saying nix I’m just not going to go and pay the money to put it into a Metro Vancouver transfer station when I can dump it down a ravine and nobody will see it,” said Richter. “Metro–when they say they’re not having a downstream impact–they are.”
But Paul Henderson, Metro Vancouver’s head of Solid Waste, disagrees. He says they’re confident fees have nothing to do with the spike.
“Looking at the first quarter before the tipping fees changed compared to the first quarter of 2014 and then we looked at the second quarter in 2015 compared to the second quarter in 2014 and we didn’t see any increase triggered by that change in tipping fees,” said Paul Henderson.
He said every year around the region, there are about 50,000 instances of illegal dumping.
In Langley, more staff is being hired to deal with the issue and they’re looking at installing more surveillance cameras. However, Richter wonders if they should take it a step further.
“Maybe we should create our own dumping area with lower tipping fees than Metro has in order to encourage people not to do this.”
Richter said she’ll be floating the idea at council when they meet again this Fall.
WATCH: Langley Township councillor Kim Richter talks to Geoff Hastings about the problem of illegal dumping in her community.
Comments