GREENBUSH, Maine — Town leaders will seek a contempt of court ruling against a Cardville Road couple for what officials called one of the worst illegal and apparently unprofitable junkyards they said they have seen.
The town will seek more than $40,000 in court and attorney’s fees and cleanup costs, minus the value of the more than 170 tons of steel and other debris it has begun to haul from the property, the town’s attorney, Roger Huber of Bangor, said Wednesday.
Huber and Town Manager Jerry Davis expressed regret at seeing the town’s dispute against William and Susan Corbett of 1103 Cardville Road go to court. They said the Corbetts have repeatedly missed cleanup deadlines and ignored consent agreements since Davis began pursuing the cleanup of the multi-acre property more than a year ago.
“This is one of the biggest junkyards I have ever found,” Davis said Wednesday. “They were not selling anything. They were just hoarding stuff. One of the buses they had on their land had about 70 weed whackers in it. None of them worked.”
“The town has been very, very patient,” Huber said. “To Jerry’s credit he has tried to give them every benefit of the doubt along the way and for the most part this has come back to haunt him.”
The Corbett’s attorney, Joseph Bethony of Bangor, did not immediately return a message left at his office on Wednesday. A woman who identified herself as Susan Corbett contacted the Bangor Daily News and vehemently disputed the account presented by Huber and Davis.
“The truth needs to be told, not one-sided,” Corbett said in an answering-machine message she left. When her call was returned and Corbett was asked what was inaccurate in the account presented by Davis and Huber, she said, “everything.”
Corbett declined to elaborate, saying that she wanted to speak about the issue at another time after consulting with her attorney.
A town-hired cleaning crew removed most of the 170 tons of steel, which included 6.5 tons of snowmobiles, 50 cars, tractor-trailer trucks, pickup trucks and three buses since the beginning of August, Davis said.
“That is a lot of sleds,” Davis said.
The Corbetts have a 150-acre property but most of the debris was on a 2-acre parcel behind their home. Davis said the Corbetts had repeatedly denied him permission to access the rear of the property and kicked him off their land.
A contractor also left the cleanup job because of their actions, and the Corbetts attempted to evade the anti-blight ordinance by registering several of the vehicles, he said. A Penobscot County sheriff’s deputy has stood by during cleanups.
Work has temporarily stopped to allow the ground to dry out, Davis said.
Normally, Davis said, property cleanups occur without court action. Consent agreements or handshake deals resolved eight complaints in Greenbush so far, he said. Two other cleanups occurred after initial court appearances.
Davis said he needed the court order to access the property and get it cleaned because the Corbetts declined to allow him to look in the backyard after allowing him to inspect the front yard. Davis has alleged that he already had found enough evidence of what would be legally defined as a junkyard in the front yard — three junked vehicles. A line of trees blocked the view of the backyard from Cardville Road, he said.
Under state law, violators could face fines between $100 and $2,500 a day on receipt of initial letters advising them of violations if they fail to clear illegal junkyards or devise a plan within 15 days.
Davis previously was Lincoln’s code enforcement officer.