DelGuerico Disposal Inc. defended its recycling business in Springfield Township, Pa., earlier this week before a zoning board meeting to fight a June cease and desist order.
Growing piles of old appliances on site, declared zoning officer Jeffrey Mease, constituted a nuisance under township code and is inconsistent with uses permitted in the resource preservation zone. While the business had operated for years as a trash hauler, the zoning officer said the recent sale of the hauling business to BFI had altered its legal status as a pre-existing, grandfathered use.
Disposal company owner Tony DelGuerico, however, recalled in testimony that his father had been collecting scrap metal since the late 1960s, storing it for resale. He had continued collections ever since with few changes.
"We've not done anything different than we've done all our lives," he said.
Mease defended his June 6 notice that the DelGuericos violated township zoning. "In prior years there was not the [same] accumulation," he said.
The June order, he added, followed a Feb. 9 letter asking property owners to explain what he described as an accumulation of metal, including piles of appliances. Mease said he never received an answer.
Township solicitor James M. McNamara at one point called the materials "junk," then excused himself and substituted the term "recyclable materials."
David McFarlan, an attorney defending DelGuerico, confronted Mease with a 1997 correspondence that the lawyer said confirmed the township's long-standing acceptance of the business as predating current zoning restrictions. Mease, however, said that those letters did not cover the current use for solid- waste disposal.
Doylestown attorney Greg Emmons, representing owners of an adjoining property, pressed the zoning officer to confirm that township zoners never had confirmed the rights of the owners to operate contrary to current zoning.
The latest action, following the neighborhood complaints, followed a 1997 "gentleman's agreement" between the haulers and a former township supervisor.
Under terms of that informal agreement, DelGuerico reportedly agreed to plant a double-row of trees to screen his business site and cover sorting piles for his recycling operation.
Mease testified that he never observed any new fencing to screen the property.
In April 1997, the township solicitor ruled that the company was operating in violation of the zoning ordinance, but may have a "vested right" to operate because the township failed to enforce a 1990 cease and desist order against the business and even patronized it. The Morning Call Online