Ottawa Becoming One Big Garbage Dump
Bulldog commentator Mike Patton has suggested that the three-bag limit on refuse pick-up is working because people never put more than three bags on the curb.
But frequent Bulldog commenter Kosmo has another suggestion.
Three or fewer bags of garbage is working because the fourth bag and more end up here:
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/resi
Also notice a throw-away line in the CTV story saying that residents were noticing an increase in illegal dumping in Ottawa.
That’s the same thing that happened in Osgoode Township pre-Ottawa amalgamation when it instituted Tag-A-Bag.
Rural dwellers purchased tags to be attached to their garbage for pick-up. However rather than do that, many people threw garbage in wooded areas and along roadside ditches.
How long before the same thing happens in Ottawa? And how bad will the vermin population balloon to with regular meals tossed on vacant lots and parks?
Here’s an idea for the City of Ottawa. Pick up the garbage. It’s a basic service. It’s one of the reasons municipalities were created. Picking up garbage eliminates visual clutter, keeps down the stench and prevents disease. That’s why garbage pick-up is a basic service.
Now if everyone in Ottawa was a woke, politically correct citizen like most of the inhabitants of Ottawa City Hall, a three-bag limit would be a good idea. But not everyone is so woke or law abiding. The world doesn’t work that way. Many people routinely break the law because it is convenient, profitable or entertaining. Many people just laugh at the three-bag limit. Thus they illegally dump.
And that is a big problem. The Trail Road facility is scientifically constructed to limit leachate (contaminated water created by rain and snow falling on garbage and flowing out of the dump). Informal garbage dumps create water problems. Particularly, they can contaminate rural water wells. That’s a serious health hazard.
Instead create a landfill or waste-to-energy plant that can handle the refuse that results from picking up ALL the garbage. Garbage stored in backyards or tossed in abandoned lots when the three-bag limit is reached by homeowners is a bad idea.
If the city had done proper research rather than hopeful conjuring, they would know the Tag-A-Bag background and why Osgoode Township had to end it.
Ottawa City Hall must learn how people live in the real world rather than in the ivory tower on Laurier Avenue.
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There is a clear theme thank links many of the problems the city is facing. City staff, and be extension those who are failing to meet the statutory requirement of oversight of staff, are failing to understand the why. They chose to focus on the what.
The what is garbage. The why is more complicated. Why are some people producing so much garbage? Has staff put anything more than a passing thought into the possibility that the volume of garbage that they are producing is a function of the size and configuration of their household? That some households have two or three residents, while others have six or seven, some of whom are in diapers.
The what is congestion. Why are people using their motor vehicles? Has staff put anything more than a passing thought into the possibility that the reason that these people are choosing to drive to and from where they are to where they NEED to get to is because alternatives are not practical, assuming that they exist at all?
The first part of the problem for staff to accept that ‘the people’ are not a homogenous set of statistics. That ‘the people’ are people, and these people have needs that vary person to person, household to household.
The second part of the problem is that staff need to put away their tried, tested and failed techniques of the past and current. They need to think about the wide range of whys, then design multiple solutions, solutions that address the needs of the vast majority of the people. Not all, because all is a very big number.
One of the causes of the inadequate quality of the non-solutions proposed by staff is that they insist that people change their needs to meet the city’s wants. Social engineering is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It can take generations to take effect – or not. Inflicting decades of inconvenience on the population of the city is irresponsible, no matter how noble you think your values are.
Next up. Stop trying to convert the wide range of behaviour exhibit by the residents of Ottawa to a select set of ‘better’ behaviours exhibited by residents of non-analogous settings a quarter of the planet away. If only we had the mid-rise density of Paris. If only we had a cycling culture like Amsterdam. If only we had … The cities we are being compared to developed over the centuries, the millennia. They are physically different. They are often in significantly different climate zones. They are populated with people who have adapted over those same time frames to the physical settings they live in. All of which is conveniently ignored by staff as they desperately try (and fail yet again) to fit the large square peg into the smaller round hole.
On to the solution. Staff and those who have the statutory obligation to oversee the city administration need to recognize AND ACCEPT that one size never fits all. It only fits a small portion of the population. That that small portion of the demographic is the part that staff and council dwells in is self interest.
Hello Kosmo. Telling video. By the way, where’s Donald Trump and his latest Trumpmobile when you need him? Another reason people don’t follow rules is because sometimes they are not thought through before they’re implemented. One of the primary reasons the 3-bag limit was put in place is because for many years city council has procrastinated in dealing with the Trail Road issue. As you pointed out these are the self-righteous woke folk who sit in their ivory tower whose response will be “I have to follow the rules too, you know”. By the way, the garbage sitting at the side of Innes Road will not likely serve as a food source for rats until spring arrives. Once the weather gets really cold they’ll be smart enough to move inside so residents in the area should close up all their windows and batten down the hatches.
sisco, I drove past that mess Thursday, purely by coincidence. Most noticeable were the broken toilets and similar ‘house renovation’ materiel. It is in a primarily light industrial area, so no residents to worry about. Worry as in voter dissatisfaction.
Not to worry 311 will be right on it now that the local councillor has spoken up. Can’t let bad publicity percolate. That is much worse than a large eyesore only seen by those who drive past on their way to/from.