Foothills County is searching for someone who did something rather trashy.
A pile of garbage, which included Tim Hortons' cups and a substantial amount of shingles, was found on 160 Street W last week.
Employees from the Aldersyde public works department had to be called to tidy the mess and transport it to the dump.
A photo of the mountain of trash was posted on May 16 to the County's social media, with a note that indicated the cost of clean up for instances of illegal garbage dumping is borne by taxpayers.
"If it's something this size, we can't really pick it all up by hand, so that's where, typically, the Aldersyde public works guys have to send some equipment to clean that up," said Foothills County Regional Landfill manager Joe Angevine. "So that obviously gets way more expensive too."
Angevine said every county in the province deals with illegal dumping at some point. Foothills usually sees a few instances per year.
In the past, he said there has been evidence indicating the perpetrators were from Calgary.
"We've had loads that are dumped in the ditch and we dig through some of the boxes of files and stuff," said Angevine. "They're often coming from Calgary and just don't want to pay the tipping fees at the Calgary dumps, so they drive out in the County at nighttime and dump it on some side road."
Unfortunately, people who commit these offences are rarely caught, he added.
"The problem is, even if people were on alert to watch for people doing something like this, they never catch them in time or see them in time," he said.
Information regarding this particular instance or other instances of dumping on County roads and right of ways should be directed to the public works department at 403-652-2390.
