Austin Cannon wrote:Hello Friends,
My partner and I are first time homeowners and new the rural neighborhood of Appalachia Ohio. We live in the midst of a multi generational family whose land management does not align with ours. One of the largest ways this misalignment comes to the surface is how they manage their trash. Their main waste management is a private landfill that is the hillside behind their house and ours, but on their private property.
Recently they have begun burning their trash once the sun goes down. Help! How do we confront them on this? For one, I am not a confrontational person, secondly I am new to the neighborhood and in my 20’s (they are older than me, thus more intimidating?). In my personal opinion involving the authorities is my last result, but definitely something I would like to avoid.
Last bit of prevalent information in this situation that I would like to emphasize is the multi generational family 75 acre property that our 1.25 acres sits in the middle of. Obviously we don't want to be the squeaky wheel that results in a hostile neighbor dynamic.
Hello Austin,
You are right to be concerned. Burn barrels, believe it or not, are the largest uncontrolled source of lethal air pollution in North America. I learned the ins and outs of it when I was asked by a woman named Julie Innes back in 2008 who was in a very similar situation to yours. She lived at the end of a dead-end road in the bush. The prevailing wind travelled the length of the road and the smoke would pour in through her kitchen window even when it was closed. She wore a military-grade gas mask in her house whenever the burning was going on which was once a week. Each time it happened, she would call an ambulance and collapse. The ambulance would come and take her to the hospital. Once there, she revived. The doctors claimed she was faking it. She'd been to the Police, the Fire Department, the
local Town Council in Minden, Ontario and the local
newspaper. The newspaper covered her story on a number of occasions but no one would talk to the neighbours to get them to stop. That was the state of things when she called me.
It was winter, the snow was deep. she explained and showed me how it all worked. She insisted that I not talk to the neighbours because she didn't drive and they were her only way to get to a store for groceries. She was a First Nations woman too, so that was part of what was working against her with the authorities.
The burn barrels in question had fabricated lids that looked like the hood scoops on a muscle car. All of them were pointed directly and her house.
Back home, I checked the legislation and found that burn barrels are illegal in Canada without a permit and are not to be used for burning anything but wood and paper. My next stop was the local OPP - the Ontario Provincial Police. They were non-committal and knew nothing about the health hazards. After that, the Fire Department to find out about permits. Nope, they'd never been asked for a permit on that street. They professed to know nothing. In reality, they knew exactly what was going on. They weren't doing their jobs and didn't want to. Everyone was related in one way or another. The Town Council claimed not to know anything either and refused to do anything including enforcing their own bylaws.
After that, I met with OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, the top cop who blew the whistle on street racing and changed the laws almost worldwide single-handedly. He did it by fraudulent means but that's another issue. I wrote a book about it.
I've known Fantino since 1967 when we both worked at a grocery/department store called Steinberg's Miracle Mart. So we knew each other. He promised me he would investigate. He didn't.
So with no other options, I went and talked to all of her neighbours and explained to them what they were doing to Julie. They listened. They stopped burning their garbage and no longer took her to do her grocery shopping. She wouldn't talk to me anymore after that. She died of lung cancer and was not a smoker, lived in the wilderness. In my opinion, she was murdered by her neighbours and the Town of Minden's Municipal officials who
should have protected her.
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