A handful of homeless people received personal apologies from the Mayor of Abbotsford Thursday after city workers dumped chicken manure on their camp to drive them away.

The feces was spread several centimetres deep at a gathering place near the railroad tracks earlier this week. It was removed by Thursday morning but soiled feathers remained and a noxious stench hung in the air.

Mayor Bruce Banman told reporters the city is trying to determine who ordered the tactic, but wouldn’t say what punishment the person or persons responsible will face, if any.

“I would like to think that we can use this as a teaching moment on how to deal with people in a compassionate manner with dignity and respect,” Banman said.

“This is now about moving forward and repairing the damage that’s been done.”

Poverty advocate James Breckenridge exposed the manure strategy in a column titled “This Stinks” in the Abbotsford Today newspaper.

He claims the move is just the latest in a series of attempts to put pressure on the city’s most vulnerable citizens and make them feel unwelcome.

“The city gets into these cycles where they try to drive the homeless out,” Breckenridge said.

“Eventually it reaches the point where somebody who’s feeling the pressure from above them does something desperate and dumb and it gets press attention.”

Breckenridge said he’s appalled that workers would treat their fellow residents so disrespectfully, and the tactic may have harmed more than their feelings.

Homeless man Thomas Pappas walked through the manure on Monday and told CTV News he wound up with an eye infection.

“I guess I must have breathed something or got something in my eyes,” Pappas said. “Two days later I went to see the doctor because my eyes, I couldn’t see out of my eyes.”

“I think it’s wrong. It’s disgusting.”

A similar maneuver was reported in 2009, when the City of Surrey used manure to drive homeless people out of a vacant lot. Workers eventually removed the manure in the face of community outrage.

With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Rob Brown