Vermont targets unlicensed junkyards

[ccharles000]

As soon as state officials asked for citizen reports of unlicensed junkyards, they began getting an earful.

Many responses to the Agency of Natural Resources' online invitation reek of residents' pent-up frustration over illegal junkyards that have been around for years.

It's not clear, though, that ANR will have enough money and staff to force cleanup of the junk collections.

Of a property in Huntington, one person wrote in: "Inspections (of the property) are only conducted at neighbors' insistence and compliance is never enforced. Open fluids, solid waste and batteries are among the materials found. Debris and solid waste is always in stream channels.

"Vehicles are stored outside the fenced area and I believe literally within the highway right-of-way," wrote another person, describing a property in Hartland Four Corners where "junk vehicles, scrap metal, old collapsed mobile homes, falling-in houses, etc." are piled.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20091224/NEWS03/912240302/1095/Vermont-targets-unlicensed-junkyards