CBRM holds emergency meeting, promises to take action on missed garbage pickups

A Cape Breton councillor is picking up garbage to ease the growing problem in the region.

As the uncollected garbage has been piling up around the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, (CBRM), so have the complaints.

“All I could think about was my own mother, how she would have to just drag her garbage in. So, I was thinking there is more than her who don’t have access to go to the dump,” District 12 councillor Kim Sheppard-Campbell says.

Sheppard-Campbell took matters into her own hands recently, driving trash to the dump for a handful of Whitney Pier, N.S., area residents who could not do it themselves.

“This garbage has been out in the heat probably for four days, with at least 30 C weather, and to me that’s health and safety issues,” Sheppard-Campbell says.

At her home in Mira Gut, N.S., Diana MacKinnon-Furlong’s blue recycling bags have not been picked up for roughly a month.

People have been reporting inconsistent pickups since the municipality switched from contracting out collection work to doing it themselves on April 1 in an effort to save residents a tax increase.

“We really hope that this turns around soon, environmentally, for our beautiful island so that people don’t end up resorting to desperate measures,” MacKinnon-Furlong says.

On Wednesday, an emergency meeting of council was held about the issue where it was decided to take action sooner than later.

“It sounds like we’ll be going out, potentially, to some contractors and looking to fill the gaps in our service,” said District 8 councillor Steven MacNeil.

MacNeil said that might improve collection service for now, while the municipality works out the details of a more sustainable longer-term plan.

“Hopefully that we never miss another garbage pickup again,” he said. “That we always pick up your garbage and if a catastrophe happens that we’re not going to, we communicate that quickly and effectively to our residents and then provide a solution immediately.”

The issue will be brought up again at the next regularly scheduled council meeting on July 30.

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