For $500 you can pay six days of rent in a two-bedroom West Vancouver apartment, order several dozen iced cinnamon almond milk macchiatos, or festoon a North Vancouver neighbourhood with scrap.
Earlier this week, two reverse garbagemen showed up in broad daylight to unload a pickup truck worth of drywall, paint cans, and shattered tiles across a walking trail in a residential neighbourhood.
It’s amazing they didn’t get away with it.
The blight-makes-right pair utilized soaring egos and drooping IQs, showing up in the middle of the afternoon in a truck with a phone number on the side.
And even with that, they still would have shaken authorities off their slimy trail if not for some quick acting neighbours and the agreeable nature of the pickup truck’s former owner, who supplied police with the VIN.
We congratulate the District of North Vancouver bylaw officer and the RCMP officer who tracked the detritus duo and forced them to clean up their mess like scolded children.
But $500 is not enough.
If they toss trash at us, we have to throw the book at them.
Between 2013 and 2015, West Vancouver issued an average of three demolition permits a week. Including permits for renovation, the District of North Vancouver handed out about three construction permits every day in 2016. Illegal dumping isn’t just about esthetics, the discarded materials present a clear danger to the North Shore’s biodiversity.
When it comes to those who do dirty deeds dirt cheap, the only thing they understand is filthy lucre.
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