Northwood Mall garbage causing 'horrific' situation for homeowner

THUNDER BAY -- City Council is looking into what can be done to assist a man whose yard backs onto three garbage bins outside the Northwood Mall.

Since the bins were moved across the mall's parking lot to sit against Doug Pringle’s backyard fence in December, the homeowner has dealt with garbage strewn across his lawn, flocks of seagulls and a stench that will only get worse as summer approaches.

Pringle appeared before council on Monday to request an exception to the city’s fence height bylaw so he doesn’t have to look at the garbage anymore.

“I’m hoping we can build our fence a little higher,” he said as he requested permission to exceed Thunder Bay’s six-foot-fence law so he could build one seven feet tall.

“I guess the ultimate would be to build it as high as you can so the garbage doesn’t blow in our yard anymore because you’re constantly picking up trash all the time.”

Pringle called the situation "horrific," claiming the bins’ lids are seldom closed, that waste blows onto his property when garbage trucks lift and tilt the bins three times each week and in one case, that a bin’s contents were set on fire.

“I come out in the morning the can is pitch black. And I’m looking at it – it’s kind of dark out – thinking, ‘there’s something wrong there.’ Then I realized they lit it on fire,” he said.

“So I called the fire guy and he says, ‘it’s nine feet from your property’ but the charcoal is right to my fence. If that was summertime – they don’t cut the grass back there – there would have been an inferno running down that back yard.”

City administration has been regularly monitoring the situation and has requested the mall construct a barrier between the garbage bins and Pringle’s fence.

“We’ve been there many times,” said the head of the city’s bylaw enforcement division, James Coady.

“Sometimes they’re not closed. Sometimes they are. I would say that’s fairly typical of garbage bins located at malls where employees are using them. They open them up, throw the garbage in and they don’t close them. Typical or not, they should be closed. We can’t force them to lock them.”

Coun. Iain Angus introduced a motion requesting that administration draw up a memo exploring the city’s legal options, beyond asking the mall to build another fence between the bins and Pringle’s fence. The motion passed unanimously and the issue will return within a month.

Mayor Keith Hobbs was critical of Coady’s “voluntary compliance” approach to the mall’s owners. He suggested stronger action be taken on the city’s behalf.

“I’m in support of the memo but I also think we should be laying charges whenever possible,” Hobbs said.

“If the complainant sees the lid is open all the time, why can’t we? And why can’t we lay charges and keep laying charges until this issue goes away? I don’t see why the complainant should have to build a fence at his expense when it’s not him that’s causing the problem.”