Toronto mayor says it is 'probably time' to look at reopening city dumps to public

TORONTO — Residents who undertook a big spring cleaning while stuck at home and now find themselves with excess garbage and nowhere to take it may soon get some relief.

The city closed all of its drop-off depots and transfer stations to the public at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in anticipation of staffing issues.

While it has since relaxed those rules somewhat and now allows members of the public to visit the Bermondsey, Ingram and Scarborough transfer stations between 7 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Saturday only, it’s four other transfer stations remain off-limits to the public.

In an interview with CP24 on Saturday, Mayor John Tory said that it is “probably time” that the transfer stations reopen.

He said that he would raise the issue with staff next week with the hope that the service could be restored, at least on a temporary basis.

“I have been asked this throughout and our problem was that during the sort of height of the pandemic we were short-staffed, we had people that were ill, and we just didn’t want huge numbers of people to end up at transfer stations,” he said. “But I will go back on Tuesday and ask about this because I think it is probably time now that we take a look at reopening those transfer stations on some sort of basis because I do know that people spent the time they had when they were at home cleaning things up and may have some extra waste.”

The city also suspended yard waste collection in the early days of the pandemic but resumed that service last month after successfully managing to offer it on a temporary basis without impacting other services.

“Even if we did it on a kind of a temporary basis for a while to allow people to get rid of what we have than we should do that,” Tory said of the drop-off depots on Saturday.