SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Salvaging at the landfill will likely resume early in the new year as soon as the city finishes building three cells, according to the city's director of public works, Dennis Kefalas.

The city banned salvaging at the landfill three months ago after a large fire at the facility. Smoking has since been prohibited, and a new three-cell salvaging system is under construction.

Kefalas said the city had hoped the new system would be operational before Christmas, but the cold weather hampered construction, which will now likely be finished in the new year.

"We're having three salvaging areas," he said. "For week one, we'd have the first cell or area open, so people can drop off or pick up stuff. In week two, you'll start dropping stuff off in the second cell. You can still retrieve salvageable items from the first two cells. Then in week three, we ask you to drop off material in the third cell. We end up closing cell number one and then cleaning that out, because obviously after two weeks ... people probably won't want the stuff in the first cell so we'll dispose of that. We just keep rotating the process through like that."

Kefalas said landfill employees will be able to use large equipment to empty the unused cell while not risking the personal safety of residents.

Yellowknife artist and prospector Walt Humphries said the new system won't work as well as the old one, as dumpers will now have to sort their garbage, deciding what to salvage before dumping it, as opposed to the salvagers going through the dumped garbage.

He added he doesn't believe all dumpers will necessarily have the patience to sort their garbage, nor would most of them know what could be of interest to a salvager.

"Out of the new system, it's only going to be stuff that people set aside for salvaging. So the people who salvage beverage containers and things like that, their business is going to be cut down considerably," said Humphries. "A lot of stuff that salvagers would like to get their hands on, they won't be able to. A lot of people don't realize they're throwing away really good stuff into the bins that salvagers could make use of. A lot of stuff that could be salvaged, the salvagers won't get a chance to look at it."

Humphries said on a typical summer weekend, about 100 people would go to the landfill at different times, salvaging what they could. Even in the winter, some people go to look with a number of them cutting firewood out of scrap pieces.