Duane Hicks
While the numbers still are being crunched as to how much extra waste was brought in to the local landfill over the past two weeks, there’s no question the town’s “Fight the Blight” campaign was a bona fide success.
“It was a lot of work for the town but a great response from the community,” said local bylaw enforcement officer Patrick Briere, who, along with fellow officer Arlene Byrnes, co-ordinated the clean-up with town staff and volunteers.
“They got right on board with it,” he noted.
“We definitely got rid of a lot of blight from within the community, that’s for sure.”
During the town-wide clean-up last week (May 16-19), two main crews covered an area of town each day.
These consisted of a loader and a couple of tandem trucks.
Summer students loaded the front-end loaders with debris and smaller items. The loaders then dumped the junk into the trucks to be hauled to the landfill.
A third crew, which Briere was in charge of, collected appliances such as fridges, freezers, and stoves.
Crucially, the town saw many volunteers lend a hand, including retired Fort High teacher Walter Horban, who had spearheaded a town clean-up by high school students in years past.
“We had lots of volunteers. It was great to see,” enthused Briere.
“People were showing up, right off the street, helping us out.
“There were a few people helping us out just up and down their back lane,” he added.
“They just happened to be in the backyard and walked up and down the land, helping us with appliances.
“That was good to see.”
The clean-up also saw support from local businesses, including George Armstrong Co. Ltd., La Place Rendez-Vous, and Gillons’ Insurance.
The two local trailer courts—Lakeview and Walleye—cleaned up their own properties, as did the Rainy River District Social Services Administration Board.
“It was nice to see a lot of help come from those sectors,” said Briere.
“The volunteers did a lot of work,” he added. “Some of them worked some pretty long days with us.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” Briere admitted. “We were surprised to see people coming in off the street, saying, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got time. I can help for a few hours.’
“It was great.”
The waste pick-up was preceded by two free tipping days at the local landfill May 14-15.
And during the week of May 9-13, town residents were able to put out bags of garbage—without needing bag tags—on their usual collection days.
Briere noted numbers, such as how many man-hours were worked and how much waste was brought to the landfill during the two-week campaign, still are being worked out.
“Once this is done, we are planning to have a de-briefing meeting and go through the process of next steps from there,” he remarked, noting this meeting likely will be held later this week or sometime next week.
Briere noted town council will receive a report at its June 13 meeting.
One aspect of “Fight the Blight”—branch removal—still is being wrapped up this week.
The Fort Frances Power Corp. experienced a breakdown with its wood chipper last week, but it has since been repaired.
As such, the FFPC will be catching up on chipping branches this week.
Residents can help out the FFPC by removing any stump pieces or larger logs out of their brush piles, leaving branches which easily can be fed into the chipper.
The FFPC won’t chip the larger pieces, and suggested the residents use them for firewood or given them away to someone else to use.
