The Town of Drumheller will be offering their annual Spring Cleanup service again beginning May 2, and town staff want to stress the importance of following procedure to ensure the free service runs efficiently.

Landfill Operations Manager Tammi Nygaard wants to stress that items must be separated in piles according to their category, that the cleanup is for household waste and not commercial waste, and if people wish to try and salvage items from properties prior to cleanup that they ask permission of the property owner.

“We had people in the past who would salvage items from properties but jumble up the piles and leave a mess,” said Nygaard. “Technically it’s stealing because you’re going onto private property.”

Nygaard also stresses that the cleanup is for personal, household waste and not commercial. 

In order to be picked up, leaves must be bagged and branches cut to no longer than four feet, as Nygaard says they’ve had property owners cut down trees and leave them almost in whole for town employees to pick up. 

“We need to keep it sorted and separated so we can do the work in the small amount of time that we have,” she said.

This year’s clean up will begin May 2 in East Coulee and then Rosedale on May 3, which is different from previous years. Town employees found those eastern communities were the longest days of hauling, and felt that it would be better to do the hardest labour early in the cleanup while they are fresh. 

The valley continues to shine as a backdrop to full scale motion picture productions , and this continues this spring with the “The Solutrean.”

Crews for the ice age epic adventure spent the last half of this week filming in the valley. The east part of Drumheller was a hive of activity with filming near the hoodoos.

 Drumheller not only shines for its unique landscape.

“We very much appreciated the opportunity to film in the landscapes around Drumheller and would like to thank the town for its hospitality,” producers told The Mail via e-mail.

                The film is set at the end of the last Ice age and the title refers to the Upper Paleolithic period of early advanced humans in Europe, where the film is set.

Albert Hughes is the director of the project. He hatched the original concept and developed the story of over a number of years. He brought Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt on board to write the spec. screenplay.

                The film features Kodi Smit-McPhee, who played in “X-Men: Apocalypse,” Jóhannes Haukur Johannesson whose credits include “Game of Thrones” and Jens Hultén.

Hughes is producing along with Andrew Rona. They previously worked together during Rona's tenure as President of Silver Pictures, where Hughes directed “Book of Eli.” The production is planning to take full advantage of the IMAX-3D format when the film is released.

“The Solutrean” is Studio 8’s first film to go into production. Studio 8 is a filmmaker driven company focused on building longstanding relationships with filmmakers.