Once you’ve burned the pallets in your woodstove and you’ve got buckets of ashes that are mixed with nails, how can you get rid of the nasty mess?
One way would be to drop them off along the roadside, somewhere not too far away but where you likely won’t be seen doing it. Last winter you chose London Road.
Your act was far from thoughtless. You dropped the ashes in neat piles rather than scattering them. You left them far enough from the road that the nails wouldn’t be a problem for vehicles.
You left the piles a couple hundred metres from each other so as not to create one huge eyesore.
You dumped in a visible, easily accessible area so that cleanup would happen—far better than throwing garbage down a steep bank into the bush where removal would be difficult if not impossible.
Unfortunately, when the snow melted the piles sank into the grass. Even with the piles cleaned up, some nails remain hidden, creating a hazard that will last for years to come for wildlife, horses, drivers who pull off the road too far, unsuspecting children who might walk or ride their bikes on the grass.
At least the piles were cleaned up before the roadside grass cutter flung the nails randomly and dangerously in all directions.
Perhaps next year you could find a more acceptable solution to the problem of what to do with your hazardous garbage. Taking it to the landfill is what most people would do. If you must dump it in the bush or along a roadside, simply placing cardboard or sheet of plastic under the pile (one pile, not three please) would allow for easier and more effective cleanup.
If you are simply looking for a way to save money, there’s no need to mess up the environment while doing so. If you are trying to damage the environment, well, I guess you’ve found a good way to do it, but you might ask yourself “Why?”
– Ed Matthews, Grand Forks
