'A garbage dump': Regina council to tackle cleanup, fines as loose trash piles up

Orion Paradis has been cleaning up the alley behind his Heritage-area business for years. He says spring is one of the worst times as the snow melt exposes how much litter has been ignored over the winter.  "It's not an exaggeration to say the the alleys, parts of it, look like a garbage dump," Paradis told The Morning Edition's Stefani Langenegger.  "There's diapers, there's food, there's needles, there's mattresses, there's couches all up and down my alley. Most of it from the same properties that have been a problem for years."

Paradis is just one of the residents and business owners in the area who are frustrated by constant debris littering the neighbourhood.  He says some of it its illegally dumped, while other trash piling up comes from overflowing garbage bins. "It's just such a big problem that the spots that are causing the issue are sort of sapping the will of the rest of the people to do something about it because it just never ends," Paradis said.Listen: Morning Edition's Stefani Lanegger speaks with Heritage-area resident, landlord and business owner Orion Paradis.

Regina city council is expected to tackle the trash concerns and enforcement at a public meeting starting 1 p.m. Wednesday. 

Last April, city councillors Dan Leblanc and Andrew Stevens co-authored a clean communities motion. They emphasized problem areas in their own wards, Heritage and North Central respectively.  That same month, council voted unanimously for administration to explore harsher penalties for people who repeatedly violate city waste bylaws and illegally dump garbage. A report was expected for last fall, but it has not yet been released.

"There is this sort of fanciful idea that all parts of this city have the same waste collection needs," Leblanc told CBC News this week. "I expect at council [Wednesday] one or more of us is going to put in a recommendation that we do provide enhanced service to the areas that need it." Outside of its bi-weekly garbage and recycling bin collection, the City of Regina has no dedicated litter pickup.

Leblanc says more frequent pickup in affected areas is one solution. Another is a way to deal with big discarded items, such as mattresses and couches, left in back alleys. "People with more money are able to get those things to the dump easier than people with less money, many of whom live in Heritage or North Central," Leblanc said. The councillor suggests the city create a system to pick up the large items, such as an apartment-style dumpster or city truck specifically to collect those materials. Leblanc says most people in North Central are doing a good job to keep their community clean, and that a "select problem properties and property owners," mostly rental housing, are not being held to account. 

Paradis, who will be speaking at Wednesday's meeting, says the administration seems to favour the idea of ticketing repeat offenders and shortening cleanup timelines. However, he is not confident the enforcement will actually happen.  "Whether the city will actually give out those tickets, I don't know," Paradis said. The resident and business owner is also a landlord in the area. He says landlords should be the ones penalized for not having clean properties. "You're running a private business within a residential neighborhood, that comes with responsibilities to your neighbours. If your tenants don't clean up, who else is going to? " he said. "The property owner has the relationship with the city in a financial sense, so they're the only ones who can be penalized. The buck has to stop somewhere."

Paradis says he is hopeful the city might consider the proactive measure of increasing the frequency of trash collection, a move that would lessen the potential for loose trash to blow around.  "A big problem in this area is that there's a lot of scavenging," he said. "When the trash is picked up more frequently, the scavenging happens inside the bins. Bags are ripped open and the contents looked through, but it is contained within the bin." In Regina, the community standards bylaw regulates and enforces property maintenance standards. People living in the city can also be fined for littering on private or public property under the clean property bylaw.