Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 05/05) - Ashton Hawker is fed up with people who have no respect for the land. For him, the last straw was finding a moose carcass at Fiddler's Lagoon.

Last week he showed a reporter the tracks where a wolf had dragged the carcass into the bush.

Not only was he angry at where the animal had been dumped, he was angry it had been dumped at all. The hide could have been put to good use, he said.

Hawker is an environmental monitor with the Metis Alliance. He inspects mine sites to make sure the companies are disposing of their waste properly. But when he comes home to Yellowknife, he sees household garbage at the sewage lagoon and litter all over the roadside.

"I've seen people throw their Pampers right out the window, changing their kid as they're going up the road here," he said.

He wonders what kind of impression the litter leaves on visitors to the Territories' capital.

Another concerned citizen, Wendy Stephenson, wrote a letter to Yellowknifer after she spotted household garbage dumped on Vee Lake Road and Con Road.

She thinks confusion over the new dump fees may be causing people to dump their trash at the side of the road rather than risk paying a fee at the landfill.

Public Works manager Dennis Kefalas said his staff have seen no increase in roadside trash since the new tipping fees went into effect in July.

"It's only a couple of isolated incidents a year," he said. "It hasn't been a major epidemic by any means."

Illegal dumpers are attracted to roads with a low volume of traffic, he said.

He said dumping of household trash at Fiddler's Lagoon is an ongoing problem. Workers spend one day every few weeks removing household trash and taking it to the landfill - where it should have been deposited in the first place. One of these cleanup days costs the city about $1,000.

Restricting access to Fiddler's Lagoon would be one solution, he said, and that idea is being batted around city hall.

Roads around Yellowknife fall under several jurisdictions. The various public landowners include the City of Yellowknife, the NWT's department of Transportation, Municipal and Community Affairs, and the federal government.

Once a year, in the spring, Ingraham Trail residents band together to collect roadside trash.

The rest of the time, the department of Transportation is responsible for cleaning up Highways 3 and 4, including the roads to Dettah, Vee Lake, Prelude Lake and Cassidy Point.

Transportation crews don't go out looking for litter, said regional superintendent Michael Conway, but if they come across garbage while working they will pick it up, and people who spot garbage on the Ingraham Trail can report it to the department.

The penalty for littering on NWT highways is a fine of $75.

As for Hawker, he said he will continue to pick up after his littering neighbours. After all, he said, who owns the land is a moot point.

"The Creator didn't sign any papers," he said.

However, he hopes his fellow Yellowknifers will teach their children to have respect for the land, as he has tried to do with his own kids.