Tire Appeal Fought

The city of Bridgeton, N.J., filed a motion to block an appeal brought before the county construction board on behalf of the owner of a site where thousands of illegally-dumped tires have sat since Aug. 2001.

David DeClement, who is representing Ralph Leard, had appealed a number of citations for fire code violations that were issued against his client in July, September, October and December of 2002.

According to David Schoch, Bridgeton’s fire chief, Leard has until Feb. 4 to file a brief with the board. Schoch added that the city would be required to reply with a brief by Feb. 7. The board will review the two briefs and then make their determination, he said.

According to local press reports the defendant in the case claims that in the past he was not responsible for the illegally dumped tires.

Philadelphia-based National Recycling Corporation, which has a lease on the property and attempted to garner city council's support to have the property zoned as a tire recycling facility in the summer of 2001, apparently permitted Paul Murphy of King of Prussia to drop a sizable portion of used tires at the site without Leard's permission.

In turn, Leard believes Murphy and NRC should pay for the shredding and/or tire-removal effort.

DeClement, who represented NRC in their bid to get approval of the site, feels Murphy should remove the tires because he is allegedly responsible for them being there.

Serata said, should the county board deny the appeal, DeClement and Leard could take their appeal to the state level.

"My reaction is they need to stop fooling around and clean up the site. They need to do what we've asked them to do, which is simply cleanup the site. They're the owner of the property,'' Pirolli said.

Leard was also cited for violating city zoning codes and plead guilty to a charge of failure to cleanup his property in Vineland Municipal Court in November.

Since the fire code violations began last summer the fines have grown to between $15-20,000.