Junk removal in Cumberland.

The village is the historic river settlement on the south bank, roughly bounded by Regional Road 174 and the river to the north, Colonial Road to the southeast, Innes Road to the southwest and Trim Road to the west. It is a designated Medium-Sized Village in the City's Consolidated Villages Secondary Plan. This is the Cumberland with the flood history and the private services.

The former township is much larger. Cumberland Township became the City of Cumberland in 1999 and was amalgamated into Ottawa on 2001-01-01. It also held Carlsbad Springs, Navan, Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Sarsfield, Vars and the eastern half of Orléans, which is why so much east-end title and permit history runs through the name.

The ward is Orléans East-Cumberland, Ward 1, which expanded eastward to take in Cumberland Village after the 2020 ward boundary review.

One more that catches people. Cardinal Creek Village is not Cumberland. The Tamarack tract sits immediately west across Trim Road and is Orléans. Listings lump the two together constantly. If your street is in Cardinal Creek, junk removal in Orleans is the page you want, and the job is a different shape: packaging and construction offcuts rather than a lifetime of accumulation in a house on a well.

The City is the free option, and it reaches Cumberland the same way it reaches the rest of Ottawa.

Households on curbside collection get three garbage items every two weeks. A bag counts as one. A bin with a removable lid counts as one, up to 140 litres and under 15 kg. A bulky item such as a single piece of furniture counts as one. Anything above three has to go out in a City branded yellow bag, and furniture and large bulky items cannot be bagged at all. Over-limit waste without a yellow bag is left where it stands with a courtesy tag on it.

Run that against a village property. One bedroom set is the whole allowance for a fortnight. A barn, a workshop or a lifetime in one house takes months at three items a cycle, and none of it touches what comes out of a flooded lower level, because sodden drywall, insulation and carpet are not three items.

Cumberland was named among the main flooded locations in Ottawa during the record 2019 Ottawa River flood, alongside Constance Bay, Fitzroy Harbour, Dunrobin and Britannia. The river crested about 30 cm above its 2017 peak on 2019-05-01. The Cumberland to Masson ferry had already been shut by flooding in 2017. This is a documented, dateable local event, and most Ottawa suburbs have nothing like it in their record.

Here is the part that is Cumberland's problem and not Barrhaven's. On a serviced street, flood water is a building problem. On a well and a septic system it is three problems at once, and Ottawa Public Health is specific about all three.

Septic approvals in Ottawa are not handled by the City's building department. The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority is the registered code agency handling septic permits for the City of Ottawa under Part 8 of the Ontario Building Code, working as the Ottawa Septic System Office, and its remit covers new systems, replacements, renovations and decommissioning.

So if a building is coming down and its septic system is going with it, that is a permit, not a digger. The RVCA asks for the Septic System Decommissioning Form at least 5 days before work begins, then an inspection once the system has been pumped and either filled or crushed. It also asks for a pump-out receipt from the waste hauler, a site plan showing where the system was, and before and after photographs. Book the pump-out and keep the paperwork, because the inspection asks for it later.

Riverfront work has a second layer. Under Ontario Regulation 41/24, in force since 2024-04-01, a conservation authority permit is required before development in a regulated area, and regulated areas include flood plains and shorelines. Three conservation authorities hold responsibilities inside the City of Ottawa, so which one covers a given Cumberland address is a question to settle before work starts rather than a thing to assume. We have not verified which authority holds the village shoreline and we are not going to guess at it on a web page.

Start with the distance anyway, because it is the part people underestimate. The Trail Waste Facility is at 4475 Trail Road off Moodie Drive, in the far southwest corner of the city. From the east end that is close to the full width of Ottawa, and the gate keeps weekday hours, is closed Sundays, and opens only on selected Saturdays. So a Cumberland dump run costs most of a day before anything is loaded.

Now the part that decides it. Tipping is charged by the tonne, and the loads this village generates are heavy ones. Wet drywall, soaked insulation, carpet and underlay out of a flooded lower level weigh far more than the same material does dry. Lath and plaster out of a 19th-century wall is heavy before anything gets wet at all. A trailer that handles a garage clear-out will take one room of a flood strip-out and then sit on its axle.