Editor:
Re: Feeling dumped by White Rock, July 17 letters.
As I read the comments regarding the recent privatization of garbage pickup for multifamily residences, I was reminded of the prognostications offered by White Rock citizens last spring.
We suggested roads and laneways would be clogged with a multiplicity of noisy garbage haulers; that some might take the opportunity to avoid privatization by throwing their trash where others must deal with it; we suggested that this would come with increased expense.
Council chose not to heed our reasonable proposal to find one garbage hauler on all of our behalves.
I am also reminded of my late grandmother, the mistress of aphorisms. Two of her favourites were: ‘chickens always come home to roost’ and ‘you reap what you sow’. Her all time favourite, however, when she was most aggrieved was: ‘I told you so’.
Theresa Reilkoff, White Rock
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It is nice to know that some of the residents in other areas of White Rock now know what the East Beach residents go through with the garbage transfer station – which is there illegally – in our location.
We listen to noisy trucks, backhoe operator, street cleaner, squawking crows and seagulls; vermin; smell and breath diesel fumes, rotting garden/kitchen waste in open bins day after day, after day.
We would very much like the single-family garbage tendered out so that we may get back to our quality of life as well (Residents brace for impending change, July 3).
Just how healthy is it for us to be breathing this day after day? Many residents in the area now have very bad allergies and I wonder why.
We totally agree that the single-family residents should have joined in with the commercial, multifamily at the same time to get a good price with perhaps a good provider for all the garbage services.
The garbage, green/garden waste and recycling should not be brought back to the White Rock public works yard to be sorted. This a beautiful ‘City by the Sea’ with many tourists. Please, council members, let us have a normal life like the other residents of White Rock.
Betty Skahl, White Rock
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As day after day I watch the garbage trucks going up and down our street – which is lined from beginning to end with three-storey apartment buildings – I am confounded by the number of garbage trucks serving the various buildings and wonder how this could possibly be profitable to the companies.
There appear to be three main ones – Smithrite, Northwest and Maple Leaf, and to my surprise, two different sized trucks from the City of White Rock also serve one apartment building on the street.
I note, too, that most trucks stop on the road while making their pickups, making it hazardous to go around them into the on-coming traffic lane since there is no line-of-sight from behind the trucks.
One hopes that a more efficient system of garbage collection can be figured out.
Merrill Muttart, White Rock
