Trail’s lone remaining bear-proof garbage bin will be removed on Monday.
The bin is located in Glenmerry at the public works yard entrance and maintained by the non-profit Natural Control Alternatives society.
The city says that although the bin’s use has increased since the removal of the bin in the Gulch less than a month ago, voluntary user fees have not increased.
“We can see that residents find the program useful as the bins are full on dumping days, which occurs twice a week,” society president Scott Leyland said in a news release.
“However, the fees of $5 per bag are not at all where they should be for the number of bags placed in the bin. At the bin’s current use, I anticipate a total cost of $8,500 to $9,000 for the year, with donations in the $3,000 range.
“Unfortunately, the public support isn’t adequate to sustain the management and maintenance of the bin and this leaves us with no choice but to discontinue the service.”
Leyland said that their business plan was based on two-thirds cost recovery, with the option of leaving money in coin boxes or sending e-transfers. The other bin in the Gulch had even poorer response.
“Both bins were well used, so it wasn’t because of few users, it was few donors,” he says.
He adds they had the same situation in Rossland, where there are two communal bins, but when he made a public appeal about the problem, tipping went up.
“Rosslanders are covering the costs now, so those bins are not at risk, but in Trail we didn’t get the same response. I’m not quite sure why. I don’t know if that’s because of inflation and people having less discretionary income.”
Until now, the society has been able to subsidize the bins through contracts they hold with the City of Trail and Selkirk College for humane ground squirrel control. However, those contracts run out at the end of the year and the work will now be done in-house. Therefore, Leyland says they needed to make sure the bins were self-sufficient.
The intent of the program is to provide an additional service to curbside garbage collection during the bear season (May through October). Money collected from the bins were to help offset the tipping and maintenance fees.
Now that the service is discontinued, the city says you should store your garbage in a secure location until collection day.
Leyland says the problem with curbside pick-up is that crews can’t be everywhere first thing in the morning, so even if people put their garbage out before going to work as they are supposed to, bears can still get at it before it’s picked up.
He says he still thinks communal bins are a good solution to preventing human-bear conflicts. Other communities have also tried them. They have been a success in Fernie, but not in Castlegar, where a pilot project ended early because the bins were being abused.
Leyland says abuse was not a problem in Trail. While some bears got into the bin in the Gulch last year, that problem was fixed with some modifications.
