People are taking their garbage and illegally dumping it in the bush outside of Slave Lake.
Keith Denoncourt is a resident of the south shore area and an environmental science teacher at Roland Michener Secondary School who is fed up with their trash.
Stopping at a randomly selected cutline 11 km west of town on Hwy. 2, he demonstrates how easy it is to find illegal dumping.
Only a few paces into the bush people have abandoned, among other things, major household appliances, furniture, carpeting, paint cans, auto parts, aerosol spray cans, jugs of butane, a slaughtered moose and what appears to be the seats from a bus.
“I have challenged my students to find one clean cutline and in three years of me challenging students, I had one student come to me and say ‘Mr. Denoncourt, I’ve got a picture of a clean cutline near Athabasca.’ And I said, ‘That’s my point. We should be able to come here and this would be clean’,” says Denoncourt.
Jule Asterisk, landfill manager for the Lesser Slave Regional Waste Management Services Commission, accompanied Denoncourt to look at the illegal dumping.
That the dumping leaves an unsightly mess is obvious, but beyond that, it may also be hurting the environment, she says.
“Some of it’s more dangerous than others, but even in your couches, there’s flame retardant chemicals. It’s not inert. It doesn’t just sit there forever,” says Asterisk. “The butane and oil jugs have residuals that can contaminate the water. The fridge has Freon in it, which hopefully hasn’t leaked out because it was probably kicked off the back of a truck, but that eats the ozone layer. So it’s not just inert.”
Denoncourt blames the dumping on old-fashioned attitudes to waste in northern communities.
At one time, it was acceptable to find an isolated spot and leave trash, but in the age of plastics and household chemicals that can’t continue, he says.
The irony is that nearly all of what they find could have been dropped off at the municipal landfill for free. Although businesses pay a fee to dump waste at the landfill, residential users can dispose of nearly anything without a fee, says Asterisk.
Appliances such as freezers and refrigerators that contain Freon cost $25 to dump. Other major appliances such as stoves cost $10, although the first Saturday of every month non-Freon containing appliances can be dropped off for nothing. Beyond that, residents are allowed, at no charge, 500 kilograms per load with no limit on the number of loads.
The weigh scales at the landfill aren’t used to bill residents, but to find out how much waste is coming from either the Town of Slave Lake or the Municipal District of Lesser Slave River, says Asterisk.
The only thing people need to do before they arrive is sort their garbage, says Asterisk. Much of what people bring in can be diverted from the landfill for recycling or other methods of disposal.
That’s the second irony about dumping. Nearly everything that Denoncourt and Asterisk find in the cutline could have been diverted.
The metal from the appliances could be recycled. The paint cans and butane jugs could be stored in a new facility at the landfill for hazardous household chemicals.
The landfill also has take-it-or-leave-it sections for used electronic goods and other items.
“A lot of the problem is people don’t get to see this. The average individual doesn’t get to see this… Once they realize this is happening they do care. They do want to make a difference,” says Denoncourt.
Later this year, a volunteer clean-up crew will be making a difference. The Pure Nature Crew, which successfully cleaned up cutlines in the Jack Pines areas northeast of town two years ago, will be cleaning a site along the south shore.
For more information call Jule Asterisk at 369-2590.

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