Well, at least you got him already. Hope it teaches him a lesson, but with people like that its not likely. I think you'll need to resign yourself to finding things indefinately and make the best of it.

Sounds like a nice place though with wetlands and owls flittering about.

Hey it could be worse...at least you didn't find a corpse.

Undercover Owl, you're wrong there! I have found pieces of long leg bones that I suspect might have been from a dog this guy owned!

Just out of curiosity, what did you sue for? I mean, I don't know a lot about home sales so I don't know if a house has to be up to a certain standard. When my folks sold their place the buyers called them quite a bit about a motorcycle left in the yard and got pretty upset. And when I bought my place we had all kinds of fires the first winter, burning up what was left behind.

Steve, I sued for failure to disclose (toxic waste found dumped on property - cans half full of motor oil) and for failure to comply with the terms of the contract, i.e., that he clean up all the junk on the property. I had pictures, a drs. note (I been injured by a rusty old leghold trap and needed a tetanus shot), bills for dumpsters that I filled up with this junk, statements from contractors.

Wow, sounds horrible. It's amazing what some people will do.

On a brighter note, you have a great opportunity to help restore the land to a healthy state, the way it should be. You are obviously well on your way in this endeavor and I, for one, applaud you for that.

I only hope that this guy isn't currently engaged in trashing the land he happens to be residing on now.

please... get those bones examined, just to make sure. o.k?

newjerseytea, you probably want to avoid any land purchases in the deep South. Upon inspecting a heavily wooded family property after many years overseas, my spouse and I uncovered 7 rusted out cars, numerous appliances, other assorted garbage and what appeared to be a shrine to Pampers diapers. People are lazy!

........people are scary!

This rather infectious condition seems not to be specific to the deep south, nor even the wide open plains of New Jersey. Evidence and personal experience shows that the condition is also prevalent in areas of Massachusetts (mostly western) and Rhode Island (mostly northern). Cases in those areas seem to share one trait...all the debris is buried...or attempts have been made to make it look so.

Surprisingly, related cases in the northern climes of the region; Vermont, Maine, and parts of New Hampshire, share a much different and startling trait...all the debris is somewhat neatly and orderly placed in lines and rows, on the ground surface, in either the side or rear yards. There have been cases of front yard infection, but those tend to be few. And more surprising still is the fact that in many of these cases, the debris has been categorized within these lines and rows such that washers and dryers all share the same rows, as do refrigerators. And vehicles are similarly located. It's debris, but it's orderly and not hidden from view thereby resulting in far fewer lawsuits from unintended discoveries.

Well,let's just say that here in NH , I was almost involved in buying 50 acres of land until on closer inspection,I discovered old farm equipment,trucks and car parts poking up everywhere in the woods. The vernal pool area was the worst. That forest grew up ontop of the local farms' dump. And a big dump it was.
Folks next door to this piece told me,"A-yuh, everytime we go ta plant a bush,we hit a tire with the shovel".
Sheesh.

Oh,
I know how it is! At the back of my small (What is wrong with people?

Laziness I suspect and a very warped sense of ownership. Untill recently I lived on a private ranch of over 1200 acres. Even tho we rented we had the run of the place. Could find crap everywhere we hiked. Every ravine ws filled with old cars, oil, construction debris, etc....He even insised that he and his boys didn't have to get a hunting lisense because the deer, bear, elk and rabbits were on his land so he "owned" them! Hate to have to be the one to eventually clean up all this junk!!

Dear..............

the husband has land on the mountain behind our home/village. When he bought it 30 years ago, one spot was already known as a dumping grounds, an illegal activity then as now. We continue to see evidence of people dumping there, LARGE appliances, furniture, any kind of junk imaginable. There are huge signs posted all around regarding the fines but no one cares. They go out at night.
Have been for years, passed down by word of mouth!! Read from time to time that the commonwealth has cleaned up one of the many dump sites on state lands. Wish they would offer the same service to landowners!!!

As for the buried cars, appliances and such; has been my life long experience here in rural pa. to find most farmers, and there are many, with some sort of a burn barrel/pit and general trash heap. This heap can be extensive, home to many a rusted tractor, auto, old appliance, porcelain potty, asbestos roofing, and the like.
The Mennonite farmer's barn at one end of town has a horrendous spread of old tires which he uses to hold something down, fodder or such for the cows. What a sight!
But Mennonite, Amish or "English" as some might call all other peoples, these farmers all seem to have their areas set aside for junk, the kind which takes a million years to go away. And the villagers aren't much better sometimes. This county takes the brunt of the "bumpkin, Deliverance, type jokes, widely reputed to be specifically this end of the county. Frankly, I think it was a deliberate and cunning self-smear campaign designed to keep the world at bay! As for the bones; there have been a couple recent incidents in which those from out of town have mistaken our sacred earth and woods for a graveyard. I should like to have a chat with those ones.

I dread the day I finally tackle the 'dump' area at the back of our property. It was a big brush pile when we bought the home but I can see things peeking through the dirt. not to mention the toxic zone by the garage which was covered with old wallboard. That area had ferns and lily of the valley. I removed the wallboard and what looked like ferns or lilies began to sprout. Except they grew in crazy mutant corkscrews and never became identifiable plants. I would like to excavate the dirt there although I would feel guilty about where to dump it!

I can totally sympathize. When my sister bought her last house, she found scores of black plastic bags filled with ancient shoes used as fill in the low spots. Ewww!

ARGH, some people are sloppy, lazy, inconsiderate, both. My next door neighbor has had assorted debri piled up next to his house-old wood, metal, an old door, etc-right in the site line of my kitchen window-for 9 mos. Town says it's his property-well, he threw a bunch of broken glass down the back hillside-that is not his property-but town says I have to press charges against him to have it removed. This guy has already made threats to me, so what do you do? This is suburbia, too, by the way, not a rural area...you are really doing the earth a favor though with this cleanup effort!

I'd just like to remind people that until quite recently in most rural places there was no way to get rid of stuff except to establish a dump on your own land. When I was a child in the 1950s, our upstate NY summer home, an old farm, had a dump that had been used for years. We put our garbage there too because there was no other option. And until the last 15 years or so, there was no trash pick up here in rural WV. Every farm I knew of had a dump on the land. You have to get rid of stuff somehow, and people years ago often had little knowledge of larger pollution issues.

lacyvail, That's fascinating! I remember growing up in a greener part of Philadelphia in 1950's and 60's We used to incinerate our trash and We had garbage cans for garbage collecting twice a week. along with racoons and posums We also had a garbage disposal and my granmdmother used alot of the garbage in the garden. Now the squirrels totally trash my trash cans They have eaten big holes in the plastic! Sarah

And here I was a little peeved that I found plastic, old soda cans, and pieces of broken cement while cleaning out part of my new yard (not to mention what seemed like hundreds of partially decomposed pet toys).

Glad you are cleaning things up, NJtea. Best of luck to you in your effort.

after reading all these follow-ups i feel bad complaining about my few logging ruts and standing water holes. as far as i can tell other than the oil cans left by the loggers we haven't found anything except one tire and one large metal barrel, empty, thank goodness.

DL

Twenty years ago my parents purchased 14 acres of wooded land across the street from a housing developement. The property was quite overgrown. They owned 1000 feet of street frontage across from aprox 10 houses that lined the other side of the street. My parents had an area around the center cleared to build a house. After the construction was complete we began to help them clear the street frontage. OH MY!!! The garbage we uncovered! Years of piles; each directly across from every house. We burned the yard waste and hauled the glass and cans and misc furniture, carpet etc to the dump. My father put up No Dumping signs along the street. Apparently these people could not read because they would still try to haul their yard waste across the street and dump it. We noticed people with wheelbarrows comming from other streets to dump their yard waste too. They treated my parents very rudely because we removed their dump. Finally my father spoke to the police and was told that these people could be fined for littering and trespassing. Once the word got out that my dad meant business the dumping stopped. But the attitude never changed there. They resented someone improving a peice of property that was formerly used as the neighborhood dump. My parents have since moved and that piece of property was subdivided and now 5 houses are on that 1000 foot of frontage. I wander if those old neighbors are trying to dump garbage in the new yards! I bet not.......Dianne

Well the dog being buried on the property I can understand.... but most owners would say this is where my dog is buried..... please respect that...... they wouldn't just bury their dog in a random place for you to find.... I cremated my pets so I don't have to worry about it..... I can dig up their urns if I have to move...... this guy sounds crazy..... why the heck would he carpet the ground????? Why didn't he just throw stuff away????? That's probably the nuttiest story I've ever heard...... regarding someone's yard..... except for perhaps my neighbor who recently ripped out my lilacs........ and refuses to pay to reimburse them...... don't worry I'm taking him to court....... :) ......

Why that sounds like my property! We knew (mostly) when we bought it though, got a good deal from the owner and an owner contract. But still, it is a LOT of work. There were almost 20 cars (we've only gotten rid of about half), at least 50 or so tires, bedsprings, wires, dead motercycles and boats... the list just goes on. We've been hauling to the dump (which is what people are supposed to do when they don't have trash pick up!), selling some stuff, using a few things (my husband made an old beer keg into a hydrolic tank for his wood splitter) and just trying to find all the rest. Unfortunately, our neighbors say he burried his trash too. I just hope we never find it! I put my sheep in a pasture that we had been mowing, only to find once they ate the grass that there was all kinds of junk in it. I found pop cans, toys, refrigerator racks, bricks, rope, pliers.... I keep finding more. Needless to say, I don't walk barefoot!

Otherwise the property is lovely and we really enjoy it. It is just a lot of work to clean up what was left behind.

I'm afraid my family is also prone to "pack-rat-itis". My grandfather passed away 2 years ago and we were selling his property. Oh man oh man! What a disaster! This is a wooded lot within city limits and it is just chock full of dead cars and junk he thought might be useful.There was a whole pile of foam insalation rotting away. It was a real mess to try to throw in a dumpster. Nothing like foam dust all over you and down your shirt on a hot day! He'd pick stuff up off the side fo the road even if it was just total junk. He was living in a mobile home, but the old house got used as storage. It was piled almost up to the ceiling. We had to climb over piles to get into diffrent rooms! It was horrible. We the lot to someone who wanted to build a house. It's hard to find a lot that big in town these days. We cleaned up tons... but I still don't envy the work they will have to do. What a mess!

The contract man should be ashamed of himself,we have to protect these valuable parts of our world so much goes on in them!! GOOD MAN!!! FOR TEACHING HIM A BIT OF A LESSON.

When i bought my property 10 years ago it had old farm equipment,pipes and old wiring. I loaded it all up on a large trailer and took it to the local recycling plant and had a nice payday.They will accept washers and dryers without you having to take them apart. The motors of appliances have alot of copper in them which pays alot better than just scrap metal if you wish to remove it. This is a great way to get rid of junk on your property.James

DH and I moved out of our 2 acre home in the country to be closer to the city.(have to make a living...) One guy we rented to left us all kinds of junk when he moved out. DH and I hauled almost 1 ton of scap metal to the recycle place. Sold it for enough $ to buy lunch at a nice place . Worse than that...I hand weeded in an flower bed i left behind---almost got stabbed witha seringe (Needle was used for illegal drugs based on other evidence) Found 7 in that small bed. Hang in there.

kim

I moved from a sprawling New Jersey town just across the river from Philly where I lived my entire life. We had trash collection twice a week, and a "big item" pick up and recycling once a week. By big items, I mean refrigerators, old TV, tires, washers, old furniture, mattresses, etc. You put it out...it was gone. If the scrap man didn't take it, the town refuse guys picked it up at the curb and it was done with. This convenience was taken for granted as part of everyday life. So I was in for a rude awakening when I moved to rural Massachusetts. Nothing! No trash collection at all! You either have to pay to have it collected, or take it to the town transfer site (fancy words for a dump) where you have to pay them to take it; like 10 bucks for a mattress! I now pay 5 bucks a trash can to have it collected instead of having to drive the nearly 16 miles to and from the dump. Consequently, the locals bury everything up here. Up here, if your neighbor has a backhoe, he's probably burying his trash. I have one that buried an entire car in a big hole he dug with his backhoe. While it aggravates me to think about what might be leaching into my pristine well, we have no way of getting rid of old crap up here except pay to have it taken away. When you see a house up here with a wood stove for heat, and upholstered furniture on the front porch, you quickly realize that the inhabitants can't afford to have it hauled.

......continuation from above.

I've even gotten into the act, albeit in a small way. I stopped the local daily paper. It generates too much trash. I throw all vegetable leftovers, and vegetable matter onto my mountainous compost pile (No...they don't take clippings up here either). All meat garbage, bones, fat, etc are stored in the freezer and place out on trash day (once every two weeks) or...ahh...brought to work and surreptitiously place in a cafeteria waste basket(Hey! It's a small benny). I remember when the South Jersey pig farmers would collect your garbage that was left in a small metal can on the curb. Without an organized system of refuse removal, people in rural towns are going to continue to bury junk.

People in rural areas bury their junk mostly due to the cost of having an organized system of refuse removal.

That's silly. People can pay to get rid of trash. I'm quite poor (at least that is what they say... I don't usually feel like it!), and I live way out in the country where even if you decide to pay for pickup, they arn't going to take the large stuff. We burn things that are made of wood, compost newspapers and cardboard (when not burning it) and haul the rest to the dump. We are cleaning up after the previous owner who left lots of junk. We have paid to have almost 20 cars hauled away. We are going to have to pay for hauling many years of trash and junk from our property.

So, because he was too cheap or lazy to haul it off, now we, in addition to hauling our own trash, are also hauling his as well. If we can do this on our VERY limited funds, I don't buy it when others say it is too expensive. I think we have taken 3 freezers, two dryers, several couches, tires, metal type scrap, and just all kinds of junk. We still have a fridge, a dryer, at least two stoves, a couple of campers....

Nothing makes me more angry (except maybe cruelty to animals and children) than seeing where people have dumped. If you could load it in the car to dump, you could take it to the dump! Sore point with me. I mean, I am POOR, like shop at thrift shops, own used cars, qualify for WIC, got earned income credit kind of poor. And it is cheaper to take to the dump than to have pick up anyway. We take the trash for two households, plus whatever extra garbage we can fit in the truck from the property, and almost never spend more than $20 a trip + gas. If we take appliances, it is more. They don't charge for recycling, so that helps. We go once, maybe twice a month.

Some one just dumped a car on the road just up from us and it makes me want to scream! Everyone else has to pay, but somehow it is ok for them to dump? Why not make us all pay by having the county have to come with a work crew to load it on a truck. It cost us (my husband and I) $20 a car to have someone come and haul them away... imagine what a county workcrew and truck costs! The worst part is, whomever dumped that car had to have had it up on a truck to get it there! Man, some places will take it for free or even PAY you if you can deliver it! They had it half done!

Just makes me really mad.

Soooo....you're one of the exceptions to the rule. It's not silly. It's life. It's real. It's sad. But that's the way it is. Call it poor. Call it lazy. Call it whatever you want. But getting around fees that one either can't afford to pay, or fees one doesn't want to pay, is a tradition for many in this country...probably the world. Where there's a will to avoid, there's a way to avoid.

You take care of your place and that's great. But not everyone is you, or me. And not everyone takes the same care. It's life. It's real. It's the way it is.

Wow it is amazing what you can find in the woods BUT some people love this...ME! You see i collect antique beer cans and often go searching in old dumps for brands i dont have. If anyone reading this dosnt mind my strange hobby and someone poking around in your dump before you clean it up let me know. I live in upstate NY and sometimes travel a few hours to go do this so if you live in upper NY, western VT etc send me an email to "crumpup501@yahoo.com". Though i cant feasalby clean up your dump i will surely haul some away if there are old beer/soda cans and i will also let you know if there is anything hazardous (IE oils, paints etc)that needs attention so that it can be removed to avoid dangers. Thanks
Mike

My sister bought a house on 8 acres, with a forest and two ponds in the back. There's a car in the second pond. do you remember Psycho?

Rusted car hulks, appliances, carpeting, old furniture are all things you can see. You know it is there and can do something about it.

It's the stuff you can not see, dumped by various individuals and institutions for years, that worries me more.

My compliments to the folks that are recycling, cleaning up their properties and making sure metals etc. make it to centers where they can be reused.

2 sides to the story - I lived outside Albany, GA in 1984 and there was no trash pickup at that time. If you bothered, the trash was taken to a central place on a main road with the biggest dumpsters I've ever seen in my life and picked up by the county. I don't know what they do now. I honestly can see why some people wouldn't bother or maybe they didn't have transportation for bigger items. We burned our paper and bagged the rest of the trash and hauled it off but it was definitely a hassle. I never heard of composting back then and the vermin that live outside in the climate of the deep south would totally deter me from creating anyplace for extra creatures to live - yuck. They had swamp rats that lived in the creek that were as big as a cat and giant palmetto bug cockroaches that don't die because it doesn't get cold enough that follow you around like a pet dog if you have food. Then there is my dads neighbor who has carpeted the edge of his pond to keep weeds down. I can actually see the humor in that. I wonder if there is a chemical problem with carpeting but if its inert its not a bad solution. Same guy has put some carpet down along fencerows and around the edge of his large, organically manured garden. Like I said, if carpet is inert maybe this is a better use for it than filling up a dump - but I'm not advocating just dumping it in the woods. If its not inert then obviously it should be disposed of properly. My problem is with people who throw things away before they are used up.

We had some old junk here, leftover from the previous owner....like old fencing, hog houses, and a delapidated old chicken house. I paid someone to come get it, and he wanted to just dig a big hole in our property and bury it. I thought that was a horrible notion. What if everyone did that? At least, when things are taken to the landfill, people know not to plant a garden over it.

We have some old carpet here too... and I'm using it to kill grass and weeds in my garden space before I plant. I'll take it to the dump when I'm done. Figured I may as well get some use out of it before I have to get rid of it.

We now have almost all the cars gone. Just a van, a pickup, a camper, and a couple of things to put on the back of a pickup laying around still. That is a big improvement. We have had more than 15 cars hauled off.

But we continue to find trash. Especially motorcycle and boat parts, tires, and refridgerator grills.

When we tilled up my garden space this spring, we found out the hard way that the power to the well pump was just regular house wire laid just under the grass. My husband is unemployed right now and we really could not afford to pay the several hundred dollars to pay to rent a trencher and lay almost 300 ft of pipe and wire. Argh. I'm sort of holding a grudge about that one....We still talk to this man now and then, he could have at least TOLD us about it in passing sometime during the last 2 1/2 years we've lived here!

This is such an interesting thread. I come from the Canadian prairies where there were no disposal facilities at all until recently, and what there is remains limited. So disposing of all manner of garbage on your property was the norm. Maybe that mentality developed because of the seemingly endless space out there (as opposed to dense urban areas where they can't find landfill space to save their lives). Everyone burned their garbage in a burning barrel (and still do) or created their own little dumps. I doubt people thought much about how their actions might affect ground water, air quality, etc. Some of these things we just did not know then. We used to carry water to our livestock in "rinsed out" 5 gallon pails that used to contain herbicides and pesticides. ARGH!!

I live in Eastern Canada now. People in my area burn garbage in barrels. Recently our municipality regulated burning. At first, I was annoyed ("what are they going to regulate next?!"). Now "they" are saying that backyard burning is one of the worst forms of pollution. Don't know if I buy that but I stopped. I felt a bit shocked, like I should have known better, but I'd just never really thought about it. I just did what others did. I'm a bit obsessed with reducing and recycling, and try to be informed about the environment yet there I was burning garbage.

People here still "bury" old barns. I haven't seen it but it involves burning it to the ground and covering the foundation with soil - poof, gone! I have 2 such foundations on my property and have to work around them (broke a shovel "discovering" one of them).

We have to take our stuff to the landfill and dispose of it for a fee. We can recycle lots of stuff for free. But when I drop my garbage, it seems very few people are recylcing. All around on the garbage heap is paper, cardboard, bags of cans, etc. You wouldn't believe how fast the landfill is filling up. You can't fail to notice it but it doesn't seem to be affecting people's behaviour. Yet folks sure complain about having to pay $1.25 per bag! Very disheartening. I wonder if it will take a crisis for us to change how we think about the materials we consume and dispose of?

Interesting how many people have commented on how lazy those people who bury their junk are. But when you think about it, digging holes by hand to bury those mountains of stuff must have been hard work! Seems almost ironic.

My mom reused and recycled long before it was in vogue. She came from poor, hardy pioneer stock who didn't waste stuff. So the stories about using carpet to keep weeds down strike me as an example of "not wasting" more than ignorance or laziness (altho there's always room for those!). As alyrics noted, if it's not bad for the environment, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Having said that, I don't envy those of you who have to clean up those awful messes. I'm amazed and grateful for the time, money, and effort you have put into properly disposing of garbage that's not yours. There's a little back road near here that I take in summer. Every year, some clown dumps a dryer or stove in the ditch. Drives me nuts. I wonder what's going through those people's minds that they can behave like that. I always try to use that to remind myself to watch for my own behaviours where I do "stupid" things without thinking (like burning garbage).

cnid

Hi cnid,
I think it would be a good lesson in over-consumption for all of us, if we had to bury ALL our trash close to our houses! I have the feeling people would think twice about everything they bought then!

Over a year, and this thread is still going. I think the answer is to include the cost of organized refuse collection in your property taxes. This is how it was done when I lived back in South Jersey. You had no choice about trash collection; it was made for you. The differences are day and night. There aren't any washers or refrigerators in the yard; no old truck caps or tires, or batteries. Folks don't pour motor oil into the ground when it will be taken away for you. One of the first things that struck me when I moved to rural Massachusetts was the crap and junk many houses had in the yard. As the area grows, it seems that the people moving in have the money to afford refuse pickup. It's the long-time residents who appear to collect the junk, and create an eyesore sitting next to a lot with a $700,000 home on it. If they would realize that the presence of my new home just doubled or tripled the value of theirs, maybe they'd clean up their act.

My parents live in rural Missouri, on land that belonged to my great-great-great grandfather. And yes, there's a lot of junk in them thar woods. I hate to see it, but I know the reasons why it ended up there. Seventeen miles out of town and no rural trash pick-up was part of it, surely. When I was little, in the 70's, the phone lines didn't reach quite as far as our house. Our neighbors on both sides still had outhouses; our closest neighbours had no electricity at all. Trips to town (17 miles away) were so rare that my neighbor would take the battery out of his truck and clean it after every trip. It's so easy to criticize people, and so hard to see things from someone else's cultural perspective . . . hey, that's why we have wars, right? I'm sure my great-great-great grandfather never expected his land to belong to anyone other than his own family. There was lots of land, and few people to fill it. And anyway, what was he SUPPOSED to do with junk?! Fast-forward a few years to my grandparents: entrenched customs/ philosophies of land ownership & use, but now with a population explosion, and a proliferation of indestructible junk. (Who came up with the idea of carpet, anyway? Concrete? Plastic? Gigantic appliances that couldn't be recycled? Weren't we better off without this stuff?) It took awhile for people to change their perspectives, to realize that they were inflicting actual damage. Of course, people now know better than to dump or bury junk . . . unless it's in approved landfills. But fast-forward a few more years. Will people be overjoyed to be stuck with our landfills?! Will they be "hot under the collar" at the ridiculous profligacy with which cities heap up literally mountains of junk, doing next to nothing to encourage recycling and the use of biodegradable materials?

I am glad you got some compensation and I agree that the prior owner did wrong. That said, you are lucky that you could sue him at all. In many jurisdictions (including NY where I am) the contract of sale "merges" into the deed unless there are well-drafted clauses that allow the representations in the contract to continue after delivery of the deed. The upshot of this legal jargon is that all prior representations are gone when you accept delivery of the deed and then only what representations that are in the deed (and not the contract) have any force. Also, "buyer beware" is the rule in many jurisdictions so, absent intentional fraud, it is often up to the buyer to do his own inspecting prior to purchase.

Sounds like a familar story. We bought 11 acres of woods/wetlands and have been cleaning up garbage for 7 years. The previous owners bought the property with the garbage already there.It was all dumped before the 70's.
We dissposed of 4 truck loads of garbage in april,of cans, bottles and other garbage that was left here..
We also had to get the township to stop sewage from leaking onto the property. We dont know how long that was going on before we purchased it.
it frustrating for us because we have to pay to get rid of it.
cindy

Wow. Someone brought up this thread which I had posted to in '04. I have since removed roll bars, an old fashioned rototiller (under a painters tarp), truck tires, metal coils, pipes and metal pop bottle caps everywhere.

I lost my house and car keys on the property so we bought a metal detector to find them. Problem: the metal detector found metal everywhere. Luckily the sun glinted off the keys or we never would have found them.

I can't get myself to grow vegetables here although the plants are doing ok. After three years the mutant fern is almost normal looking

I have to admit to being a little hot around the collar too.

From TwoSevenRight above: "I think the answer is to include the cost of organized refuse collection in your property taxes. This is how it was done when I lived back in South Jersey. You had no choice about trash collection; it was made for you. The differences are day and night. There aren't any washers or refrigerators in the yard; no old truck caps or tires, or batteries. Folks don't pour motor oil into the ground when it will be taken away for you. One of the first things that struck me when I moved to rural Massachusetts was the crap and junk many houses had in the yard. As the area grows, it seems that the people moving in have the money to afford refuse pickup. It's the long-time residents who appear to collect the junk, and create an eyesore sitting next to a lot with a $700,000 home on it. If they would realize that the presence of my new home just doubled or tripled the value of theirs, maybe they'd clean up their act."

I am frankly stunned by this mentality. As a gardener and lover of the earth I certainly don't think that dumping on land is a good idea. But, as several people gently suggested above them main issue in many of these cases is simply a lack of money to pay for trash removal. Adding this cost to taxes doesn't take care of it--it just puts a bigger tax burden on those already strapped.

I cannot believe that anyone would not stop to think about the fact that he is doubling and tripling (and in MA more) property values in a rural area, which for homeowners just means more taxes. It's not like wages are going up for these "fortunate" locals who live in an area that has become suddenly attractive to the unbelievably wealthy. Whatever "benefit" they might get from increased home values only helps if they *leave* the area.

I imagine this area will follow the standard pattern--the people who have lived there for generations (and yes, dumped some rusty old junk on the properties) will be pushed out by million dollar homeowners who will price them out of their homes. Did the locals ask to have a $700,000 home put up next to theirs?

Wow this is unbelievable. And I was surprised at all the buried bricks, roof shingles, concrete items and poured blobs, drink cans, bottles and wrappers that were buried by the construction crew, especially at my first place, a townhouse. It was rocky clay soil on a hill (!) anyway, so I dreaded it every time my shovel made contact with something rock-like.

And the same townhouse also had an attic full of trash that the owner never cleaned out. But we got such a good price on the place after it sat on the market for a year that it was worth it.

I can't imagine finding a car buried on my property though!

This thread reminded me of a COPS show I saw once where they discovered the people were using the in-ground pool in California for a dump instead of for swimming. Gross!
Some people are pigs.