One of the selling points for Kitimat since the last millennium has been that it is a “marvel of industry and nature.”
In other words, while we have always been an industrial town, we are also blessed with natural beauty.
Super Natural Kitimat, if you like.
The tourism guide that the Northern Sentinel has produced for more than two decades has pushed that message, always including a list of trails that visitors could enjoy.
So imagine you are out on a hike looking forward to enjoying what we have to offer.
You decide to take on Craig’s Trial which runs up into the Robinson Lake area.
And you round a corner and see the scene shown in the photo above.
How’s your Super Natural Kitimat experience going now?
So what’s the city going to do about it?
Absolutely nothing.
That’s because the trail is outside of municipal boundaries, it’s Kitimat-Stikine regional district territory.
So the city is off the hook.
However, readers may remember similar photos a few months back of similar piles of trash, furniture and assorted garbage on a trail near Cablecar, well within city boundaries.
And members of a local hiking group tell me the story is the same in the Hirsch Creek area, again within municipal boundaries.
Of course all the garbage is now buried beneath the snow so it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind.
But Spring will come and those unsightly messes are going to reappear.
And probably the pile will be added to by inconsiderate people who can’t be bothered to take advantage of the quite adequate opening hours of the local landfill.
And what will the city do then?
Hopefully, given Spring is months away yet, it will have devised a way of tackling this problem so as to protect the community image that it portrays.
Hopefully.
Malcolm Baxter