Dump Amnesty

David Daski | Feb 17, 2021

I am the owner of four properties located in Central Frontenac, two rental houses, my own residence and an old church that I am renovating. Every single one of these properties came in a miserable state of disrepair, often filled with garbage. I have fixed rotting buildings and abandoned garbage strewn houses, have picked up tires and refuse along the highway, pulled dead trees out of rivers, eliminated I don’t know how many private dump sites in our otherwise beautiful woodlands, and helped the Friends of Arden and others do the same wherever I could. I encourage the occupants of my rental houses to keep their locations clean and offer to haul away their large waste items at no cost to them.  I’ve done all this with a great deal of care, cutting and burning wood waste, burying clean fill, carting metal to the scrap yards, and have never needed to dump more than two trailer loads of true garbage in any year.

Once more we go through the ritual of pleading for the bare minimum of township support in helping to keep Central Frontenac clean and beautiful, the biannual amnesty load debate. Is it really that hard to give just a little moral support to those of us who are doing the right things? So apparently the amnesty load garbage is filling up our dumps. Is it better then that the garbage remain spread all over the township? Oh, and the amnesty load costs the township money. Boohoo. I spend thousands of dollars every year on taxes and sometimes thousands more on development fees, and often wonder what for. I know, I know, maybe NOT increase the size of the township office again and again, and so money wouldn’t be an issue.  

Listen, I too am concerned about the Olden dump site eventually reaching capacity. I would humbly suggest however that, instead of encouraging people to keep the garbage in their homes, a better approach would be to hire another person to better stream the garbage. A lot of stuff gets dumped that could be burned, composted or sold as scrap metal with just a little work and some new rules.  Also, instead of concentrating the amnesty loads over a couple of short weeks, where things become chaotic and unmanageable, open it up for the entire summer or print tickets with staggered dates, so more of the attendant's time could be spent inspecting the loads as they come in.  

David Daski