SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After driving past six kilometres of garbage along the Dettah ice road last week, Dean Meyer said he went home and rallied his troops to venture out on an impromptu cleanup.

Six-year-old Jason Meyer spent three hours with his father and grandfather on Thursday, filling garbage bags with refuse they found strewn along the Dettah ice road. - photo courtesy of Dean Meyer

Meyer has lived in the city for more than 50 years and has never seen a mess as large as the debris field he, his son Byron Meyer, and his six-year-old grandson Jason Meyer collected along the sides of the frozen route on Thursday.

"I can't believe people would do that," said Meyer. "My grandson, Jason, he said he was glad to pick this up all up because it's going to kill the fish and the birds."

Meyer said the crew started at the Yellowknife end of the road, picked up refuse along the side of the road to the Dene community and then turned around and picked up garbage along the other side of the road on their way back to the city. They filled approximately three bags with Tim Hortons cups, McDonalds' food containers and beer cans, said Meyer.

"I told them it would maybe take an hour-and-a-half, but it took us three hours to clean it all up," said Meyer, adding his grandson did the lion's share of the work.

"He picked it all," he said. "We had one person stop to thank us."

Meyer said the litter has been gradually building over the course of the winter.

"I could never figure out why people would throw garbage out like that. It's just like throwing garbage into the lake in the summertime, but maybe people do that too, I don't know. But my grandson was more concerned about the fish and the birds."

Craig Scott, executive director for Ecology North, said he's thankful to the Meyer's for taking the time to tidy the road. Scott said Ecology North has organized clean-up operations on the ice road for the past 12 years.

"We organize a cleanup every year," he said. "In a couple of weeks, there will still be tons of stuff that melts out of the snowbanks."

Scott said littering on the ice road is worse than trash chucking on land, because once the ice melts it will all sink to the bottom of the lake.

"Plastic bags are particularly bad. In the ocean, plastic bags get eaten by large fish. That will eventually block their intestines and kill them," he said, adding he has not seen evidence suggesting fresh water fish will also eat garbage.

"Plastic bags break up into little bits of plastic and they cause widespread pollution. It litters our beaches," he said. "If you really respect the lake, hopefully you would take that garbage to a litter receptacle or garbage bin instead of throwing it out your window."

Yellowknifer reached out to the city's bylaw department to find out if it can issue tickets for littering on the ice road, but didn't hear back by press time.