Illegal dumping of boat on Windsor street 'a first' for city

There is a cost to getting rid of your junk if you do it by the book.

But there's always those who will choose to dump their unwanted goods illegally, like the person or persons who left a boat filled with junk on an industrial stretch of Sandwich Street in west Windsor.

A bicycle, a tire and a cereal box was just some of the stuff that was strewn about the boat.

Coun. John Elliott, who represents the ward where the boat was left, wasn't impressed when CBC News showed him the scene.

"You figure whoever got it here, why couldn't they get it to the dump?" he said.

Elliott said he'd not seen a similar act of illegal dumping.

Neither has the city.

"The boat is a first," said Anne-Marie Albidone, the city's environmental services manager, in an interview with CBC News.

"We have seen boats come into our public drop-off facility, but we haven't seen one illegally dumped before."

Albidone suspects that someone ditched the boat to avoid paying fees to get rid of it.

"A boat is certainly going to cost money to dump at our public-drop off facility," she said.

"There is a minimum fee, currently, for any items that are brought, but certainly once you get over 100 kilograms, then the cost is based on every 100 kilograms that that item weighs. So certainly that boat would have cost some money to dump here."

Albidone said she'll be presenting a new report to council in the weeks ahead on bulk collection.

"It's going to give council a few options to look at on how to deal with this," she said.

If you get caught dumping something illegally, the fee for a first offence is $125.