City snowfall and refuse collection disruptions

NEWS RELEASE - Distributed January 17, 2020 4:00 PM

Summary

This week, the City of Nanaimo experienced two major weather systems that broke daily snowfall records within a 24-hour period for both Tuesday, Jan. 14 and Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020. These weather systems affected service delivery levels, mainly around refuse collection.

As a result, a number of scheduled garbage pick ups were cancelled to ensure the safety of both residents and employees. During the cancellations City crews were re-routed to focus on shovelling bus stops, stairs and bridges for pedestrians. The City is addressing the cancelled routes with an additional bag pick-up at the next scheduled collection.

To be directly informed of any updates to curbside service please sign up for Service Alerts. Service Alerts can be set up as notifications on the Nanaimo Recycles app, or through the My Schedule tool on our website to be sent as emails, text messages or phone calls. Download the free Nanaimo Recycles app from the App Store and Google Play.

Link to Strategic Plan: To be a community that is livable, environmentally sustainable and full of opportunity for all generations and walks of life.

Key Points

Garbage collections were cancelled from January 14-16, 2020 due to the weather and safety concerns, which impacted 20,000 collections.
If your pick-up was missed, please set out one extra garbage bag on your next scheduled garbage collection day. Additional instructions and answers to FAQs can be found in the links section below.
Environment Canada has issued another snowfall warning with total amounts of 10 to 15 cm of snow for tonight through to Saturday morning. They have also noted that the approaching Pacific storm will have strong winds.
Staff will continue to evaluate daily collections based on weather and safety conditions and inform the public of any changes through the free Nanaimo Recycles app, on the website and on social media.

Quotes

"We realize for some, refuse cancellations were an inconvenience. However, as you may imagine, safety was a concern during intense snowfall and disrupted our regular service levels. Although we anticipate more storms, we are working to get back to regular scheduled pickups. We are arranging additional bag pick up on the routes that were missed. We do appreciate your patience and understanding during extreme weather conditions."

Bill Sims

General Manager, Engineering and Public Works

City of Nanaimo

-30-

Contact:

Bill Sims

General Mgr, Engineering & Public Works

City of Nanaimo

250 756 5302

Bill.Sims@nanaimo.ca

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