Big changes are coming to waste collection in Swift Current.
The City is converting to an automated garbage collection system this fall, and at Monday's meeting, council approved the purchase of 5400 automated refuse carts that will be distributed to homeowners.
"We're one of the last cities to switch to an automated pickup, and in the past, we've had some trouble with the manual pickup that exists today, just from a manning standpoint for the contractor to provide enough labourers to do the job," said Tim Marcus, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Swift Current. "On a day when the pickup isn't done, it takes a week to catch up, whereas with the automated pickup, we should be able to pickup a lot quicker in terms of making up for a lost day."
Marcus says in most cases, residents will see no changes to the locations where garbage is picked up, for example, those who currently receive front curb pickup will continue to get it with the new system. He adds it also opens the door to possibly offering curbside recycling in the future, but will honour its current contract with Saskatchewan Abilities Council for the operations of the Recycle Depot in the meantime.
Marcus adds there won't be an up front cost for the carts, which will be provided and deployed by IPL Inc. of Quebec, but it will be applied to waste collection fees charged to residents.
"It will be collected over a period of time on the utility bills, but the carts will be awarded to each address in the city so we can keep track of them," he added.
The new automated collection is set to begin September 15th, and five open house meetings will be held ahead of that time to provide information to residents.
Sat, May 18, 1:00 PM
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