Almost every weekday I enjoy an early morning walk at the north end (the picnic end) of Mount Douglas Park. It is a beautiful and peaceful place to walk with friends and, when permissible, their dogs.
As the season heads into summer, the dogs have to be restricted from the picnic and playground areas. However, especially on weekends, it would seem that other folk come to picnic and, to my dismay and the dismay of my walking friends, they leave heaps of garbage behind. This is especially evident on the weekends.
We walkers do our best to, where possible, pick up after these anonymous garbage dumpers but, often, the volume is simply too great, and the new garbage containers simply do not permit access to larger bags for garbage/refuse.
Is there any way to prevent such abuse of a wonderful park such as this?
Is there any method of catching the culprits, such as motion cameras?
Yes, I know that the resident animals are the ones that spread the garbage and make matters worse.
It really is disgusting and I have difficulty believing that those who leave their garbage behind don’t know what they are doing.
Two other possible solutions might be to install appropriately sized garbage containers, with lids large enough to drop in post-picnic garbage bags, in multiple locations in that park and/or make a bylaw (or enforce an existing bylaw) that requires picnickers to take away all their garbage.
R. Campbell
Saanich