After a walk along the beach this week, Penticton’s city boss is pointing out some of the garbage he’s recently found along the shorelines — including a landline phone.
Penticton CAO Peter Weeber said while walking along the Okanagan Lake waterfront a pile of garbage at a fire pit stuck out to him, particularly with a pallet and boards with nails sticking out of them and a landline telephone sticking out of the sand.
“I thought, ‘hey wait a minute, somebody forgot their phone,’” Weeber said.
“I just think that a lot of times, I hear community is very sensitive about parks and the way the community looks, but yet it is a community that is doing that kind of stuff.”
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Weeber said he thought it was a good time to remind people that though firepits are available again, garbage should be picked up, and pallets with nails sticking out of them needs to be cleared from areas where children play.
“When I was down there, there was actually kids running all over,” he said. “I don’t think a lot of people do that kind of stuff, but I see it down there all the time. People burn pallets down there regularly.”
Weeber noted there are garbage cans every 50 feet or so, but said if more bins are needed to keep the area clean, the city can do that.
“But I thought we were all in this together, right? If you want to be a community. I pick up garbage wherever I go,” he said, adding that cigarette butts continue to be an issue for the beaches.
“There’s thousands and thousands of cigarette buts everywhere. I don’t know if people don’t believe that is garbage, but it is garbage.”
@dustinrgodfrey
dustin.godfrey@pentictonwesternnews.com
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