KILLARNEY, Man. – Graeme Thomson keeps a fly swatter close at hand while seated at his desk.
He has his office door open, letting the sunshine spill onto the concrete floor in front of him. A wasp buzzes into the office. With a couple of quick flicks of the swatter, Thomson sends the menacing insect tumbling to the floor to join other casualties.
It’s shortly after 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Thomson is enjoying a brief lull in what has otherwise been a busy morning. He’s expecting another rush of people to arrive in the hour leading up to noon.
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“There’s usually someone coming in here every 15 minutes,” he said. “This place would have no trouble running seven days a week.”
Thomson works full time as the operator of the local nuisance ground, which serves the town of Killarney and the surrounding municipality. From Monday to Friday, he keeps the waste disposal site in order, making sure the mounds of materials hauled there go to their proper places on the grounds.
People hauling waste to the dump are expected to unload materials according to type, rather than tossing everything helter-skelter. That means, for example, that the smelly household waste goes into a pit, while tree branches and lumber go to a pile for burning.
“A lot of places don’t have a guy on site,” said Thomson, “and it’s just a free for all.”
Scrap metal, used tires and pesticide jugs are among the materials kept separated for recycling. A number of compounds that could be harmful to the environment are properly disposed of there, including used engine oil and the freon in old fridges and freezers.
“What have we got today?” is a typical opening line from Thomson as he approaches vehicles arriving at the dump. After a quick appraisal of each load, he tells the drivers where their materials should go.
“You’re working with the public all the time,” he said, after checking on one of the trucks rumbling to a stop outside his office. “You get to meet a lot of people.”
On this day, arrivals at the nuisance ground include business owners, contractors and area residents. An employee of the local conservation district stops by to ask if he can get Thomson’s help to hoist an old grain bin from a nearby field into the nuisance grounds. Some of the arrivals take time to chat. Others offer only a brief greeting before going on their way.
By lunch time, Thomson has already pushed up some piles of waste using the Caterpillar kept at the nuisance ground. The heap of discarded wood, trees and branches has been burned and close to 20 vehicles, mostly trucks, have arrived bearing a wide assortment of waste.
“The highest count I had when I used to work Saturdays was over 100,” Thomson said as the clock on his office wall ticks toward noon hour. “That’s a lot of vehicles.”
Another employee looks after the nuisance grounds on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and on Saturdays. The previous Saturday, more than 60 loads of waste arrived.
Thomson likes to leave for his lunch break a few minutes before noon. That’s because people tend to rush out to the nuisance grounds just minutes before the grounds are closed for the noon hour.
He manages to get away without any delays. He eats lunch at his home in town and is back to work a few minutes before 1 p.m.
His immediate priority is to bury a pile of household waste before the truck that collects garbage throughout Killarney arrives with another load.
“They’ll be here with another load right away.”
Those words are barely out of his mouth before the garbage truck arrives, throwing up clouds of dust. Burying household waste, pushing dirt and cement debris into a pit, and checking that unwanted waste hasn’t turned up in the scrap metal pile keep Thomson busy until after 2 p.m.
Then it’s time to fuel up the Caterpillar, a ritual that is done every two days, since the machine lacks a gauge to tell him when the fuel tank is running low. When he gets backto the office, which is upwind of the dump’s stench, he checks phone messages andreturns a call before resuming the routine of monitoring arrivals.
Thomson admits that he is astounded by the amount of waste that arrives at the dump. At the same time, however, he is encouraged by the local residents’ recycling efforts.
A recycling depot was established in Killarney several years ago. Now housed in what was once the town’s municipal equipment shed, the depot seems to be diverting an increasing amount of waste away from the dump.
In the past year, residents of the town and surrounding municipality recycled 204 tonnes, an increase of 91 tonnes over the previous year. That worked out to an average of 60 kilograms of material being recycled per person.
Those numbers may not mean much to some people, but to Thomson they mean a longer than usual duration before a new pit will have to be dug for household waste. The current pit was dug last September and he anticipates it will be at least late fall before it is full.
“The recycling has taken away, I’ll bet you, three truckloads of garbage a week.”
Some of the costs of operating the nuisance grounds are recouped by shipping scrap metal to a place that melts it down for recycling. Signs are posted in front of the metal scrap heap telling people they cannot salvage materials there.
However, there is more leeway for people finding things like lumber or windows that they could reuse. Thomson said he resists the temptation to salvage items that could prove useful to himself. He knows that such a practice could be habit forming.
“Once you start taking stuff home, it never ends. That’s why I bring my car out here. I don’t bring my truck.”
