Charlottetown warns against dumping snow on street

Dumping snow onto the street or sidewalk is against a Charlottetown city by-law, but city staff says there seems to be a lot of people doing it.

With more snow in the forecast, the city is asking people to keep snow off public property.

Arnold Myers spent the day clearing snow in front of his home in downtown Charlottetown.He's doing it the legal way, but he sees many throwing it into the street and on sidewalks.

"Apartment buildings, that's the worst. They come with these trucks and push it up all over the sidewalk. There's one bad one right up there. They got nowhere to put it. You know, what are they going to do with it?"he said.

"There's not much place to put it but the sidewalk's a bad place to put it too."

Mike Duffy, deputy mayor, says when people put snow on public property, it slows down the crews clearing it.

"It's extremely hard on the sidewalk plows. I've seen cases where we've had 12 to 13 feet of snow accumulated on the sidewalk. The small plows that do the clearing of the sidewalk, they're just not built for going through that so it's hard on the machinery. It's takes longer."

Duffy says people can be fined for putting snow on public property, although that's never happened in his years on council.