Regina metal company fed up with illegal dumpers

CMS Metal Products has been plagued with illegal dumping since Allan Kissner took over the business more than 30 years ago. Garbage is piling up on city land, along the fence to the scrap yard’s property.

“There’s toilet bowls, a cupboard here (and) there’s tires,” Kissner said.  “They (the public) blame us for it, but really it’s a city problem.”

Kissner said the city used to offer free landfill use for the company to clean up the mess, but three-years-ago the deal was terminated. Leaving the company to pay for the bill that could cost more than $500.00 a load.  With items like mattresses, toilets and couches it could add up quickly.

The city didn’t confirm this arrangement, but they did confirm that it’s their responsibility to clean up the land. It’s just a matter of when city crews can get to it.

“We have identified that we’ve had an issue there, there is debris and it’s on our list as soon as we can,” Deputy Chief, Fire and Protective Services Bylaw Enforcement Laura Markewitch said.

Last year it cost the city $3200.00 to clean up illegal dump sites throughout Regina. If an illegal dumper is caught, a single person could be fined $2000.00 and corporations could be fined up to $5000.00.

“It’s a challenge to determine who has dumped debris illegally, so we encourage folks to let us know if they witness illegal dumping so we can follow up and mitigate it from happening in the future,” Markewitch said.

“This activity is 100 per cent preventable, we encourage people to take care of our city and our environment.”

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As for Kissner, he feels he’s done his part in not just trying to prevent illegal dumping, but also cleaning up the mess.

“We’ve had signs on the fence and they tore all the signs off that said we’re not a landfill. We’ve done everything trying to stop it, they just won’t stop,” he said.

“I think one of the problems is, if you drop off one chesterfield or one mattress and it’s not picked up, others figure they can drop off their chesterfield of mattress off and before long the whole street is lined up,” Kissner said.

Kissner hopes the city will take action sooner rather than later, and clean up the site that has been an eyesore for so long.

“They’ve got to clean this mess up, the should come every week and then it wouldn’t be like this.”

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