Debris from dump litters East Coast Trail

A section of the East Coast Trail near Robin Hood Bay got some attention online recently — a video posted by Dan Meades shows a large amount of debris from the landfill in the woods on Sugarloaf Path, in an area he says people refer to as “the plastic bag forest.”

Meades, an avid trail runner, told Saltwire the area has always been inundated with plastic from the landfill, but this year seems worse than usual.

“There’s always got some degree of trash there that blows out of Robin Hood Bay, onto the East Coast Trail and then into the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “But even knowing that, and having experienced it dozens and dozens and dozens of times, I was shocked by the sheer amount of waste that was in this natural space and being pulled directly into the ocean.”

Meades said he understands that St. John’s is a windy city and parts of the trail are adjacent to the landfill, but he is skeptical that more can’t be done to deal with the problem.

“I know they have people go down there and clean it up from time to time, but it’s wild to me that the City of St. John’s thinks it’s OK to spend taxpayer dollars to collect trash,” he said. “They allow it to blow onto the trail and it’s just fine. If it weren’t fine, if they didn’t think it was OK, they’d fix it. That’s how we know they accept it, because they continue to let it happen year after year after year.”

Meades said he doesn’t know what the solution would be, but the city needs to look at something to stop the debris from polluting the trail.

BEEN BETTER LAST FEW YEARS: TRAIL ASSOCIATION

Patrick Ryan, vice-president of trail management with the East Coast Trail Association, said they’re aware of the issue on that part of the trail network, and the amount of debris is higher than in the past few years. The issue used to be really bad on that part on the trail, he said, but a few years ago the city started a dedicated crew for cleaning up the debris, which has helped a lot.

“The crew has been going early in the spring and clearing off the trail and what they could get to in the woods,” he said. “The last two or three years have been pretty good, especially compared to what we had seen in the years before, but this year there’s no doubt there’s a lot more stuff. It looks a lot worse.”

Ryan said he suspected the reason it took longer than usual this year for the crew to clean the area is the weather, and the subsequent state of the trails.

“There was snow on the trail late because of the spring we’d been having,” he said. “There was still snow, muck and mud on it recently, so there was a bit of delay getting started.”

Saltwire contacted the city about the issue and while no one was available for an interview, the city sent a statement on behalf of the public works department saying “controlling wind-blown debris from the landfill is a challenge given the volume of waste received and the windy conditions at this location.”

The statement said waste is managed in a few ways at Robin Hood Bay, such as spreading, burying and fencing. Additionally, there is a contractor assigned to general site maintenance.

“One of their primary duties is collecting wind-blown debris from the landfill before it can reach the surrounding environment,” the statement read. “This contractor is currently focused on the East Coast Trail section of the site to clean up after the winter.”

Since the video of the section of trail was posted, the area in question has been cleaned up.