Kelowna

Illegal dumping in East Kelowna continues to be a growing problem and a group of citizens are taking the lead in stopping it.

Just off of Gillard Forestry Road, a short distance from Kelowna's Mission, illegal dumping is rampant, and further up the road the problem is even worse.

It appears that many people, either too cheap or too lazy to properly dispose of their waste, have decided to use the site as their own dumping ground.

"Probably the equivalent of $50 to $100 worth of waste if you went to the landfill, so that likely factored into their decision as well," says Regional District spokesperson Peter Rotheisler.

Some illegal dumpers have been known to throw out receipts with their garbage with their names on it. Yet if you grabbed that receipt and took it to the authorities claiming you know who dumped the garbage, you might be wasting your time.

The District says in terms of resources, it's low on the priority list.

"It's an absolute mess," says Sean Richardson, a resident of the Mission and an avid outdoors man who is also shocked by the amount of illegal dumping going on in the forest just above his neighbourhood.

He says illegal dumping sites begin innocently enough, with someone dumping their yard waste.

"And I think what happens is people see garbage, and garbage seems to attract garbage, so it's escalated from a little bit of grass clippings that might seem innocent to piles of lumber. It's pretty disheartening."

Richardson says he does not want to see his taxes go up for cleaning up the mess, so he and a handful of others are taking the lead.

"We're gonna be the guys that come up and clean it up. As a taxpayer, I don't know that I want the city to have a crew of guys and pay them to deal with this kind of stuff. I think as citizens we need to do everything we can to put an end to it."

Richardson and his friends, along with some complete strangers, recently volunteered to clean up the illegal dump sites off Gallard and collected over 9,000 pounds of junk The Regional District picked up the fees to dump the garbage legally.