The editors are welcome to shovel out our Dumpster enclosure. Remember, it has to go over the fence. While you are at it, explain to me how a three-sided fence with the open side facing the street is going to look any better or keep ravens out? Have you ever looked in a Dumpster enclosure? When there is a fence, many people think in the fence is good enough, leading to a stinking layer of mess on the ground around the Dumpster.
And $3,500 dollars is less than the real cost of an enclosure. A 5- by 3-foot Dumpster is 15 square feet. If you put a 2-foot-wide path around the Dumpster within the enclosure for shoveling snow, you need at least 9 by 7 feet, or 63 square feet. That is a difference of 48 square feet. That loss of usable real estate is worth more than $3,500. That's before you build the fence and pay extra or work harder to get the snow out every time it falls.
-- Todd Dalton
Anchorage
Alaska Dispatch Publishing