After more than a year of neighborhood friction, the Haines Borough Assembly has stepped in to force local business owner Paul Nelson to remove truckloads of improperly processed glass fill from his Skyline Estates property.
The assembly, acting as a quasi-judicial body, voted Tuesday to order Nelson to remove and properly dispose of all the fill surrounding his home’s foundation.
The fill contains large, jagged glass bottles, plastic containers, ceramics and other items prohibited from being used as fill.
The assembly agreed to allow Nelson to cover the site’s 30-by-40-foot building foundation, which Nelson estimated to contain five to six truckloads of fill, with concrete.
Nelson has 10 days to remove the glass fill outside the foundation, cover the foundation with concrete, and pay a $300 fine.
About a half-dozen Skyline Estates property owners turned out Tuesday to express their frustration with what Nelson’s neighbor John Nowak called “the Nelson municipal dump.”
Nowak approached the assembly with a white, plastic bucket full of items he collected from the piles of fill on Nelson’s property, including plastic bottles and large pieces of glass.
“This is no joke what he is doing here,” Nowak said. “This is what ends up next door to me.”
George McCament called the fill “unbelievable” and said if he was looking to buy property now, there is no way he would invest in Skyline Estates. “We need to be protected against people who take this kind of attitude,” he said.
McCament said although he moved to Alaska to escape excessive rules and regulations, the present situation in Skyline Estates warrants government intervention. “This is absolutely what rules are made for,” McCament said.
Area residents Jim Shook, Lynn Nowak and Gerard Garland also urged the borough to intervene.
The matter came before the assembly Tuesday after Nelson appealed a decision by planning and zoning technician Tracy Cui ordering Nelson to cease dumping immediately and to correct the violations.
According to Cui’s May 1 letter, borough staff visited the site and found Nelson was violating borough littering and nuisance laws, as well as state solid waste regulations. The staff site visit was prompted by several complaints about the dumping site.
Nelson takes glass dumped by the public behind Acme Transfer and crushes it with a Caterpiller before transporting it up to the Skyline property.
The Department of Environmental Conservation issued Nelson a cease-and-desist order last year after receiving complaints about the fill and conducting a site visit. Nelson stopping accepting glass at Acme Transfer for a time, but then posted a sign stating only “clean glass” was allowed to be dumped in the pit.
Assembly member Debra Schnabel expressed concern that despite receiving a cease-and-desist order, Nelson resumed taking glass. Nelson said he contacted DEC and thought the matter had been worked out. “I guess I may have misunderstood them,” he said.
Nelson admitted to initially using ceramics and pottery in the fill before learning from DEC that was not allowed. If his crew finds something in the pit that isn’t glass, they pull it out so it doesn’t get mixed into the fill, he said.
Nelson also said recycling is a learning process, and it takes time to get everything right. “Recycling doesn’t just happen. It takes practice. It takes effort,” he said.
However, Nelson denied his fill contained hazardous material, a concern voiced by manager David Sosa. Nelson said if the borough wanted to test the fill for hazmat, he would pay for the tests himself. “I know what hazmat is. There is no hazmat in there.”
After discussing the issue for almost 90 minutes, the assembly agreed to let Nelson cover the foundation fill with concrete, though assembly member Joanne Waterman said she was “strongly concerned” with setting a precedent for allowing improperly processed fill to be used in a foundation.
Public facilities director Carlos Jimenez also expressed concern that a concrete slab placed atop improperly processed and compacted glass probably won’t hold up over time.
The assembly considered imposing a higher fine, but after consulting borough code, discovered it could not fine Nelson more than $300.
Toward the end of the 90-minute discussion, assembly member Jerry Lapp spoke up, one of the few times he did so during the entire hearing. Lapp, who said the area “looks like a dump,” said Nelson might have been able to get away with using improperly processed glass as fill if he lived somewhere out in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors.
But dumping that in “the middle of a nice neighborhood”? “That’s just wrong,” Lapp said.
If Nelson doesn’t comply with the assembly’s decision within 10 calendar days, the borough can take steps to remove the material and charge Nelson for the expense.