Messy Yard Cleaned Up; Neighbors Are Happy

Gus Opfer cleaned up his neighborhood last week.

It took his own pickup truck, a rented Bobcat and dump truck, two other men and more than four days of work.

But finally, the yard at Sixth and Van Marter is free of trash.

“I didn’t care to be seeing it anymore,” said Opfer, who owns a cabinet shop across the street. He jumped at the chance to spend Christmas week hauling away the old mattresses and shoveling up broken glass.

The cleanup was a long-awaited victory for Shirley Meyer, a neighbor who has been fighting more than a year to get the mountains of trash, broken down appliances and old cars removed.

Now, she hopes to help other homeowners facing the same problem.

“I’m really relieved (for me),” the Valley woman said. “But this could happen anywhere.”

As Meyer learned last year, county health officials don’t have the power to assign a litter crew to clean up trash-covered properties outside city limits. They don’t have the ability to bill messy homeowners for cleanups.

Instead, officials must prod property owners into cleaning it up themselves - or send the complaint to the county prosector’s office, where trash is a low priority.

When property owners refuse to clean up, the garbage can hang around for months or more.

“I just think that needs to be changed,” said Meyer, who plans to talk to county commissioners about the problem. “Whatever the process is, it needs to be looked at.”

Part of the problem, county health inspectors say, is that areas such as the Valley don’t have mandatory garbage collection service. As a result, it’s easier for trash to pile up.

The piles reached four feet high on the Van Marter property. Despite violation notices, the owner wasn’t willing to remove it, said Joe Polello, a county environmental health inspector. After the owner stopped making payments, and disappeared, the mortgage company foreclosed.

In December, the lending institution hired Opfer to prepare it for sale. The property will go on the market later this month.

“It was a pretty big job,” said Opfer, who finished the clean-up project on Sunday.

He removed four dump truck loads of trash and old furniture, loading it with the Bobcat to avoid contact with the broken glass and hypodermic needles. He found dirty clothes, dirty dishes and bags of garbage piled inside the house. He hauled out a car, two old washing machines, two dryers, two refrigerators and two stoves.

Happy neighbors stopped by to chat and watch the progress. Underneath the garbage, they said, is a cute little red house.

They just hope it will stay that way.

, DataTimes