Owners now billed for abandoned vehicles

News

Posted 1 month ago

roland cilliers

Today staff

Getting drunk, taking an old car into the forest and lighting it on fire might seem like good clean fun, but its actually both illegal and polluting and can get the vehicles owner an expensive cleanup fee.

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo's bylaw department has started a program where the registered owners or the vehicle's insurance company will be responsible for cleaning up any vehicles found abandoned in the brush. That may seem like the obvious people to pay for dealing with such a mess but the program has only been in place in the region for the last few weeks.

Lee Chambers, environmental officer with the municipality, said the new program represents a change in who is financially responsible for the expensive cleanup.

"Any vehicle found the city has been cleaning it up. There is no reason in the world why we should have taxpayers covering the removal of vehicles when the registered owner or insurance company should be responsible," said Chambers.

At the present time there are 45 abandoned or burned vehicles around the region that bylaw is aware of. After the vehicles are discovered the next step for officers, and the one they are currently in the process of doing, is to determine if the found vehicles were reported stolen.

In order to figure out whom the owner of an abandoned vehicle is police have to look no further than its vehicle identification number. Even if a truck has had its license plate removed and been burnt to its bare parts chances are there is still an intact VIN somewhere on the vehicle like in the dash or in a door jam.

Police aren't sure of the exact reasons why so many vehicles end up in the rural parts around Fort McMurray. Some seem to be the result of thieves dumping stolen vehicles while other times it's speculated to just be someone taking what they believe to be a cheaper route to getting rid of an old vehicle.

"We're a throw away society," said Chambers. "We have quite the transient population here that possibly, again I'm only speculating, their leaving and have a lower priced car that's going to take time to sell if they can sell it and it's just easier to dump it."

When walking on the trails around Fort McMurray it isn't that difficult to find abandoned vehicles. For example, there is currently one on a small island area in the Horse River.

Because of the often isolated and inoperable nature of the abandoned vehicles removing them can be quite expensive, as it will generally take more time and more specialized equipment than your standard towing company has at its disposal.

Shane Ganong, founder of the Northern Offroad Society, has become somewhat of an expert at hauling abandoned vehicles out of the forest. He and his organization have taken part in several removals in the region.

"The last guy we did this for he had his Dodge Dakota stolen and he never reported it as stolen he just took it as a loss. When the RCMP went down there they traced it back to him and told him he had to go in and get it," said Ganong.

"We were only going to charge him $150 but we broke something while we were in there so we charged him about $230."

Ganong has been working to get the word out that his organization is available to help haul the vehicles out of the forest. He said his people charge far less than what someone is looking at if the municipality takes care of the job.

"We're trying to figure out the best way to charge people without charging them too much which is way cheaper than what the city will do it for because they'll hire a dozer to go in and get it and that can cost anywhere around $500 an hour," said Ganong.

The Northern Offroad Society is currently talking with a local welder to help build a skid to help drag the vehicles.

"If it's on dry ground it drags really nice but if it gets anywhere near a sloppy area it's a hard job to pull it and we've broken stuff many times. Usually it's an easy pull. Depending where it's at, if we have to cross any streams or anything like that, that's where it gets sticky," Ganong said.

The Northern Offroad Society is a nonprofit group and money raised performing the hauls goes into supporting the group's activities.

roland.cilliers@fortmcmurraytoday.com