Got old batteries, cleaning fluids, aerosol containers, or paint cans lying around but don’t know how to get rid of them?
If so, the Rainy River First Nations Watershed Program, in co-operation with the Town of Fort Frances, Township of Chapple, and Fort Frances Times, has a solution when Household Hazardous Waste Day 2004 is held here May 8.
Running from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Public Works building on the corner of Wright Avenue and Fifth Street West, district residents are encouraged to come out to this fourth-annual event.
“I’m confident. I’m really positive we’re going to get a good response,” watershed program co-ordinator Martin Nantel said Monday.
He added advertising in the Times, as well as the town agreeing to have a flyer inserted in Monday’s Daily Bulletin, should make it well-known that the waste day is happening.
The watershed program organized the first waste day in Emo in 2001 and has been heading it ever since. The 2002 event was held in Fort Frances while last May it took place both here and in Rainy River.
Nantel noted holding it at just one location this year was the only economically feasible way to go about it, as previous years have shown the vast majority of the waste has come from Fort Frances residents.
“Most municipalities want to see the event continue, [and] everyone wants it at their town. [But] experience has shown the participation level in the west end was too low to justify the cost,” Nantel remarked.
“If they want that, we have to find another way to fund it.”
Nantel said he’d like to see Fort Frances possibly sponsor its own waste day in the future, freeing up the watershed program to co-ordinate and help sponsor an event for the west end of the district.
He was hopeful Doug Brown, the town’s manager of Operations and Facilities, along with his renewed focus on waste management, might bring this to fruition here down the road.
Household Hazardous Waste Day is designed to facilitate the safe disposal of reactive, flammable, corrosive, poisonous, and other potentially-dangerous materials found in the households of Rainy River District’s 27,000 residents, said Nantel.
He stressed all district residents are welcome to come by the Public Works building here May 8 to drop off their hazardous waste.
Last year’s joint event in Fort Frances and Rainy River removed some 4,822 kg of hazardous waste from district homes, added Nantel. The one in 2002 saw 5,000 kg of materials turned in while the inaugural event had only half of that.
Waste products you can turn in May 8 include batteries, drain cleaners, oven cleaners, pesticides, rat poison, pharmaceuticals, cleaning fluids, pool chemicals, bleach, ammonia, aerosols, paints/solvents, oils/gasoline, barbecue starter fluid, and propane cylinders.
Waste products should be separated and labelled. As well, no PCBs, commercial, infectious, radioactive, or unknown wastes will be accepted.
Commercially-generate waste also will not be accepted.
Hazardous materials that are turned in are transported from here to hazardous waste company Harbor-Kleen’s transfer facility in Winnipeg. From there, it is shipped to licensed facilities for processing and disposal.
For more information, call Nantel at 482-2479 ext. 224.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
