A Toronto man’s nearly year-long crusade against dog poop in High Park has finally seen a victory.

The city agreed to start a pilot program with Ed Wugalter and a team of volunteers to introduce two garbage bins inside the park’s off-leash area, saving dog owners a walk to the bins outside the enclosure.

Wugalter, who regularly visits the off-leash park, told the Star earlier this month that the two bins located outside at the enclosure’s entrance and exit were too far for dog owners, particularly seniors. They were expected to either hike over to the bins to dispose of their dog’s waste, or carry around a bag heavy with dog poop until they were ready to leave.

Wugalter’s group will get two black garbage bins with litter written on the side delivered to them next week. He said they’ll roll these in and out of the enclosure to be emptied as required.

“I feel very happy but I am a bit apprehensive about whether we can make it work,” Wugalter said. “I hope to make the experience of bringing a dog to High Park more pleasant.”

The city had rejected Wugalter’s earlier requests for bins because they were too heavy to move through mud and snow and because it was a health and safety issue for employees to be inside the off-leash area. When Wugalter proposed that his group of volunteers would manage rolling the bins in and out, he was told it was unionized work.

After reading about Rob Orpin, the city’s director of collections and litter operations, in a Star story, Wugalter contacted him and arranged to meet him at High Park Friday afternoon.

“Operationally, the city doesn’t see a need for bins inside the actual area,” Orpin said. “Ed and his volunteer group think there is a need that will make it easier for him and the dog-walkers there so we’re working together. His volunteers are going to try the bins out and see how they work and we’ll go from there.”

Orpin expects they will be able to tell if the program is working in the next three or four weeks.

The pilot program is only for this area, he noted. He does not expect similar requests to be made from other off-leash parks.

“We haven’t had any complaints about bins from anywhere else,” he said.

Orpin said there are litter and recycling bins at all four gates of the small dog park area. “It’s 100 metres to a bin.”

But Wugalter insists that distance was too far and it was creating problems.

Bags of excrement would be left hanging on benches or on the ground where other dogs would eat them, he said, either because people were tired or they’d forget to pick them up on their way to the exit.

Instead of a pleasant experience, taking their dogs to the park was “becoming something we had to endure,” Wugalter said.

With the new bins, “there will be less of this malfeasance,” he said.

Wugalter only has three volunteers on board so far but he said he doesn’t expect much difficulty in gaining more.

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There is one problem, however, that he’s still working to solve. “I’m concerned that some people might be off put by the smell emanating from the bins.”

His plan for now is to try covering the bins with large garbage bags to mask the stench.