Diapers, couches, and kitty litter: city residents frustrated by illegal dumping around George's Pond trails
The City of St. John's is installing cameras to deter the problem
The City of St. John's is setting up cameras in the George's Pond area near Cowan Heights, to try to catch people who, instead of heading to the dump, decide to unload their trash in the wooded trail system.
It's the neighbourhood Angela Patten has been living in for over 15 years. She walks her dogs on the George's Pond trails nearly every day, and says she's seeing piles of trash there all the time — including a sofa, coffee cups, a broken bed, and used kitty litter.
"It'll be beautifully clear and the next day there will be someone's living room sofa and just dumping all on the road all up here," she said. "It's disgusting."
It's something newly elected city councillor Greg Noseworthy is hearing about. He's been representing the people in the Ward 3 area for two months, and calls illegal dumping and pollution a significant issue, because George's Pond is high up, and pollution can feed down through the water system to Cowan Heights and Waterford Valley.
"This shouldn't be happening," he said.
"A number of residents raised the possibility of having cameras installed as a means to deter and to catch people. And we're happy to act upon that," he said.
"I think it's a step in the right direction. It's not going to stop everybody from polluting, of course, but it's one step at a time."
Community clean-up
Noseworthy was joined by Deputy Mayor Sheilagh O'Leary, and councillors Sandy Hickman and Tom Davis, to lead a community cleanup of the area on Saturday. They collected mountains of trash including bags of personal garbage, diapers, tires and roofing materials.
"There's absolutely no need for all of that in this day and age," said O'Leary.
For Hickman, the response to littering needs to be resident-driven.
"We have to ask our residents to address what's going on in your neighbourhood and indeed in the city, but also to take care of what they're doing themselves," said Hickman. "We need to be proud of our city. We have the most beautiful setting in the world, in my opinion, and we just need to do a little better job of taking care of it."
Davis also wants city residents to remember the Canada Games happening later this year.
"A lot of people are coming. There's always people coming to Newfoundland and Labrador, of course, but you know, to the capital city. Let's get out there and get cleaned up this year," said Davis.
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