At its regular meeting on Jan. 26, Peace River town council adopted the Snow Dump Use Policy to further advance environmental registrations.
“Following up on a discussion we had from last meeting, we made some changes to the policies that were discussed,” said director of Infrastructure and Development Pat Fisher at the meeting.
“We collect a lot of this information for winter contracts from a lot of contractors that would like to use the snow dump or who get contracted to remove snow for other people.”
The snow dump policy was presented by Fisher who indicated the above average volume of snowfall left operations crews and contractors hired to provide service to customers in the community scrambling to remove snow. Town administration had requests from local contractors to see if there was space for them to haul snow, particularly businesses losing parking space from growing snow piles.
“The point of this policy is to give me a publicly available and transparent framework to say you can go ahead and dump snow,” said Fisher.
Fisher said the Town needed to create rules about who can use the snow dump facility ensuring users are accountable and to help protect the Town and ratepayers from potential liability.
Administration noted that by accepting the bylaw the advantages would be providing direction as to how a contractor can become an authorized user of council’s snow dump area and provides liability protection.
“We got complaints about our contractor sign up process and we didn’t have anything for the snow dump,” said Fisher.
“I wanted to have a publicly available and transparent process of how you can get approved to use our snow dump to get rid of your snow.”
The Town’s current registered snow dump facility is located at the north-end of town between lift station 3 and the wastewater treatment plant.
Councillor Jeffrey Forsythe moved council to approve the policy as presented. Council approved the policy.
A complete breakdown of the snow dump policy can be found at the Town’s website www.peaceriver.ca.
Emily Plihal
Local Journalism
Initiative Reporter