City council in Kingston, Ont., will spend up to $1.5 million to repair infrastructure at a retired city landfill after vandalism near the Belle Park homeless encampment put the Cataraqui River at risk.
Paul McLatchy, Kingston's environment director, said the damage was unlike anything their crews had seen before.
"We don't want to replace wooden poles with wooden poles so they can be cut down again," said McLatchy. "We're going to source concrete poles and other types of more robust equipment."After the damage was discovered, the City of Kingston filed a motion with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, ordering the removal of axes and chainsaws from the encampment.
John Done, the executive director with the Kingston Community Legal Clinic and a legal representative for several of the encampment residents, consented on their behalf to the confiscation order."We don't really see that anybody [in the encampment] has a particular need for an axe or chainsaw," said Done. "But by consenting to an order that prohibits this, we're not agreeing to any facts.
The decision to spend $1.5 million on repairing the vandalism is troubling, said Sayyida Jaffer, an advocate with the Providence Centre for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation.
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