City of Whitehorse takes owner of dilapidated property to court — after 16 years of complaints

Sixteen years after neighbours began complaining, Whitehorse bylaw has laid charges against the owner of a derelict property.

The site on Lodgepole Lane remains piled with garbage, oil drums, disused vehicles and a collapsed building, after numerous fines and a clean-up order.

Neighbours say black sludge and oil slick oozes from the yard in the summer, and it smells like fumes. 

"Every day I come home and that's the first thing I'm greeted with," nearby resident Kimpton Gagnon said. 

"This completely dilapidated property, I see oil spilling and spreading onto the laneway. Also all the noise, and the smells and the dust coming off the property as they drive their equipment around. It's just not a great environment to try and raise a family."

No one appears to live on the property, which is near Porter Creek.

But Gagnon said the piles of garbage occasionally "get moved around."

Environment Yukon documents show complaints about the property stretch back to 2008. 

In 2017, the City of Whitehorse told CBC the property's owner had been fined "a number of times." 

Environment Yukon took soil samples in 2020 and surface water samples in 2022, which both showed contamination. 

In 2020, the fire department issued an order to evacuate, which deemed no-one could reside on the property until all hazards were removed.

Then, in March 2022, the fire department issued a hazardous condition order, giving the owner three months to dismantle the building and clean up the property.

It appears the response was too slow. 

"There has been some remediation work and site cleanup over the summer and through the fall of 2023 with overall progress being slower than anticipated," community services director Krista Mroz told city councillors last week.