A Kamloops resident says the city’s worsening homelessness problem has contributed to Peterson Creek becoming “choked” with trash.

Joanne Hammond says her family cleaned up hundreds of pounds of garbage along a 50-metre stretch of the mouth of Peterson Creek last weekend. Among the items cleared away were plastic, fabric, drug paraphernalia, and even lawn furniture.

“This is obviously where people are living, this has been the situation for a couple of years now, and so there is a couple of years worth of this kind of debris here,” she said on the NL Noon Report.

Hammond says the city has responded well in the past and sent a clean-up crew. However, she adds as long as the city is going to allow people to camp along the river, they should be proactive about waste collection as there aren’t any trash cans in the area.

“The amount of fabric in particular is astounding and I think that’s a pretty giant problem. Most of the fabric has got plastic in it,” she added. “A lot of this is going to get washed out into the river when the flood season starts and freshet brings all the water levels up.”

Hammond says the problem has existed there for years, but sys it has progressively worsened during the pandemic.

(Photo via Joanne Hammond)

This weekend the fam & I worked on cleaning up Peterson Creek near Pioneer Park. We covered barely 50 m of creek and collected HUNDREDS OF POUNDS of garbage. #Kamloops #WorldWaterDay 1/ https://t.co/LgruxkJHxs pic.twitter.com/6AH6bst9Q8

— Joanne Hammond (@KamloopsArchaeo) March 22, 2021