Group plans autobin cleanup

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/04/2006 (7394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AN inner-city neighbourhood group is so fed up with garbage in back lanes, it plans to hire people to clean up trash strewn around autobins instead of waiting for the city to do the job.

The Spence Neighbourhood Association wants to hire teens to clean up trash, despite city assurances it’s catching up to a backlog of overflowing garbage.

“This is a safety issue. Who knows what kids are going to pick up or eat?” association president Maggie Friesen said yesterday at City Hall after a public works committee meeting that saw councillors ask the city to study ways to improve autobin service.

“I pay taxes and other people on my street pay taxes. I shouldn’t have to clean up my own back lane,” said the Young Street resident, a real-estate agent by profession. “I don’t think anybody in the suburbs has to do it.”

The city’s autobins have been a sore spot since March, when late-winter ice and a transition between unionized-labour and private-sector garbage-removal conspired to create a backlog of overflowing bins and lanes strewn with trash. Illegal dumping in bins exacerbated the problem.

But over the last two weeks, the city caught up to the autobin backlog and now plans to even empty bins on weekends to prevent spring-cleaning waste from piling up, said Dan McInnis, the city’s manager of solid waste.

“We’re definitely catching up. Autobins are being cleaned every seven days,” McInnis aid.

But that didn’t stop city councillors from hauling his boss — water and waste chief Barry MacBride — into their committee meeting yesterday to ask how autobin service can be improved.

“Obviously, people are not satisfied with autobins. People don’t want them behind their homes, even if they are being emptied regularly. There’s stuff in autobins that should not be there and it’s difficult to enforce,” MacBride told the committee.

“We’re just scrambling. All we’re trying to do is put out the fire of the day,” added MacBride, who called autobins “high-maintenance” and joked he needs case workers to inspect lanes block by block.

The city has dedicated staff to inspect back lanes for illegal dumping, but no charges have been laid so far.

Meanwhile, Tom Ethans, executive director of non-profit group Take Pride Winnipeg, said he could probably find volunteers to clean up inner-city lanes and thus save the Spence Neighbourhood Association a couple of bucks.

“It’s just too bad there’s so much litter on the streets after the snow melts, because (it shows) people don’t care,” Ethans said. “Maybe if we start fining them, they will.”

But the Spence Neighbourhood Association still wants to hire teens as part of a youth employment initiative, president Friesen said.

As well, the group is expected to meet with the city again today, said solid waste manager McInnis.

“We’re all ears,” he said. “We want to do whatever we can.”

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca