DOWN IN THE DUMPS
One thing I learned during my thirty plus year career as an environmental engineer is that communities develop a close relationship with the places where they get rid of their trash. Waste disposal ground, nuisance ground, landfill, “the dump”: these are all terms to describe the sites where humans deposit the materials they no longer value. In some cases these sites have pits where waste products are dumped and covered over, some more primitive sites are simply a clearing in the bush and some, sadly, are riverbanks where the next spring flood can remove any evidence of last year’s trash. Many of the more recent waste management facilities, such as the Brady Road site on the south side of Winnipeg are engineered sites with better environmental protection features and processes for managing recyclable and compostable materials.
This series of Down in the Dumps geocaches will take the cacher on a tour of many of the solid waste disposal sites that have existed in the City of Winnipeg over the past 100 years or more. A significant number of these sites are either undeveloped green spaces or have been developed as parks or sports fields. This is primarily because of the risk of methane gas being emitted from these former sites or the risk of unstable ground or groundwater contamination. On many of these sites you will see metal pipes sticking out of the ground in various places. These are monitoring wells that have been installed to allow measurement of gases or groundwater quality. Due to development in the vicinity of some of these sites since their closure, it has not been possible to place all of the caches directly over the former disposal area.
Prior to the amalgamation of Unicity in 1972, many of the municipalities and towns that made up the Metropolitan Winnipeg area had their own waste disposal sites. This accounts for the relatively large number of small sites scattered throughout the current city. The placement of these sites also provides some indication on how the city grew. The older sites would have been located just beyond the edge of the community and as development progressed, one site would be closed and another built farther out of town. After amalgamation, the city was serviced by a much smaller number of larger disposal sites and as these reached their design life, all solid waste disposal operated by the City of Winnipeg was consolidated at the current Brady Road Resource Management Facility.
In addition to municipal disposal sites, a number of private sites were developed by industrial firms for disposal of their own waste materials. Local history also records that many industrial operations located along watercourses running through the city used the riverbanks as their private disposal sites. Visual evidence can still be found of the debris buried in riverbanks in some areas.
Enjoy this trashy tour.
Charleswood Road Dumpsite
The baseball diamond in front of you at Ground Zero was the waste disposal site for the Rural Municipality of Charleswood from 1947 to 1970. All types of waste are buried here including, apparently, a few cars. Best to look for thiscache when there is not a baseball game on.