Alice Devine, Mary Roberts and Bill Dallamore, left to right, stand beside the Kiwanis building in Oliver, and more garbage then they would like to deal with.
Trevor Nichols Photo
A Chronicle exclusive
Unwanted trash has been showing up at The Kiwanis Club of Oliver, leaving the volunteer group digging into its pockets to pay for cleanup and removal.
The club is a volunteer organization that donates to local charities, runs affordable housing in town and operates the “Oliver Walmart”: a secondhand shop on Sawmill Road.
The shop accepts donations of lightly used furniture, which it resells, putting the profits back into the community through its various charitable arms.
It is at that shop that people have been abandoning their unwanted furniture, treating the Kiwanis Market more like a dump than a community volunteer group.
The club accepts donations on specific days at specific times, but club director Bill Dallamore explains that lately members have been arriving to find piles of battered household items deposited during the night.
He says that most of the jettisoned junk is unsellable, which means that about once a week the club is forced to truck it all to the Oliver and District Landfill and pay to dump it.
A boxspring and mattress costs $15; a Fridge $10. And that is on top of the cost of transporting the trash and paying for the labour to move it.
“This has become a costly expense for the club and it’s taking money directly away from the services that we provide to the community,” Dallamore said.
“It’s frustrating to say the least.”
Mary Roberts is another director at the Kiwanis Club. On the morning of May 20 she stood outside the building looking at the pile of trash towering against the wall. In only five days three ripped couches, a broken fridge, microwave, table and a whole pile of assorted junk had been dumped.
“Ugh,” she exclaimed, mimicking her reaction when she arrived to find the mess.
“It’s very frustrating. We’re trying to give to the community and then someone goes and does something like this—and there goes the money.”
She guessed that the latest round of rubbish will cost the organization more than $100 to get rid of.
Dallamore says that the problem has become so bad that once a week the club is trucking junk dumped at its doorstep off to the landfill, and it is now even considering putting up security cameras as a deterrent.
Anyone caught dumping their garbage, he says, will be charged.
“Again, this is money that could have gone back into the community, but because of this activity we’re going to have to spend it on security.”
He says that he is grateful for the generosity that the community shows with its donations, as long as they come at the right time, and are things the club can actually use.
Anyone who wishes to donate sellable household items can do so Wednesday, Friday and Saturday mornings from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Trevor Nichols
Oliver Chronicle
