Following on complaints from some North End residents over garbage piling up in autobins in back lanes, Winnipeggers in another part of the city are also raising grievances.
“The smell is so bad. I’m furious. I’m powerless, helpless,” said Barbara McGillis, a Wolseley resident.
Dozens of bins in the neighbourhood are so full there’s no room for any more trash. Residents said bins have not been emptied in two weeks.
“I’m going around to find less-full bins just to throw out my regular household garbage now. I’m carrying it around in my car and looking for empty bins,” said Lindsay Welbers, another Wolseley resident.
The city is in the process of replacing 5,800 garbage autobins across Winnipeg with new automated carts, which will eventually be rolled out throughout the entire city.
They’ve already been delivered to the Wolseley neighbourhood.
Some residents believe homeowners and businesses have been throwing away their extra garbage into the autobins, before they’re taken away.
The city said it has taken crews about two to three days longer to empty bins because of the volume of trash piled around them, which needs to be cleared away first.
"If there was anything we didn't recognize it was the sheer amount of stuff that people wanted to get rid of while the bins were still in their lanes ,” said Darryl Drohomereski from the City of Winnipeg’s water and waste department.
That’s little comfort to Barbara McGillis.
"Empty the bins - I understand they are going to take them away, in the meantime empty them. It's mid summer. It was 30 degrees and sunny, (with) the flies, the wasps,” she said.
The city says crews will be working over the long weekend to catch up on the mess - and it hopes to have all the bins removed by the middle of the month.
The city said crews will be out over the long weekend to try and clean up the mess and catch up, and it hopes to have the actual autobins removed by the middle of the month. The city also said workers are behind schedule because some of their older garbage trucks broke down.
- with a report from CTV's Jeff Keele