Household waste day slated Saturday

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 Nation Watershed Program, in co-operation with the Town of Fort Frances and other district municipalities, have a solution when Household Hazardous Waste Day 2002 is held here Saturday.
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 second-annual event.
“I hope it goes well,” Watershed program co-ordinator Martin Nantel said Tuesday. “We started our communications with the public quite a while ago, with ads in the newspaper, to let them know what’s going on.
“We’ve got our permits, and now we’re sorting out the last-minute details, like volunteers and exactly how we’re going to operate Saturday,” he added.
Nantel noted the response should be positive, saying people’s “environmental consciousness” grows every year.
“A lot of these substances people know are hazardous. They know not to pour them down the drain or drop them off at the landfill,” he remarked.
“The problem is then it builds up in your basement or garage,” Nantel added. “They’re not things you want to stockpile, particularly if you have children or there’s a fire.”
The Watershed program organized the first waste day in Emo last September.
But since 57 percent of the district households which participated in last year’s inaugural effort were from Fort Frances, having it here could see an increase in the amount of hazardous materials disposed by Safety-Kleen Chemical Services Division and some other district individuals, Nantel reasoned.
Waste products you can turn in Saturday 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.
The Household Hazardous Waste Day is sponsored by Rainy River First Nations, the municipalities of Fort Frances, Emo, and Morley, Environment Canada, the Rainy River Valley Safety Coalition, and the Rainy River Valley Field Naturalists.