HERETWO OR THREE BIG LANDILL MYTHS They Definitely Want You to Believe.
HEREWORKER SCROUNGING GALLERY and the effects on landfill quality.
HEREEPA ADEQUATE RULE regulations and events at Kersey Valley. Big questions!
HEREUNCOVERED GARBAGE GALLERY Phase 3. More uncovered garbage.
HEREDUMPWATCH Who is it? Why thedumpsite? Who are the AGENTS?
HEREKIDS GALLERY. Growing up in the shadow of a dump.
HERELANDFILL LAW ways it does not protect nearby citizens.
NOTE: The FEEDBACK, and GLOSSARY pages have been retired for now.
2001PAGE2 was retired Mar 2007 to make room for ALTERNATIVE COVER page
Thanks for visiting. When you finish, go here , vote in our dump poll.
High Point's Kersey Valley: Landfill or Dump? See what others say.
Hi Yellowbird. Thanks Buck (Guru)
Thanks BigBro (signs, contacts, Ts)
"What a good camera." HoneyBunny
Thanks to all the other agents as they were called in a letter from a High Point official. You know who you are. Nell considered it a badge of honor. So do we!
On Aug 1, 2007 over 137,200 visitors had seen the truth about Kersey Valley on thedumpsite. You are visitor number to this page.
Some samples of our email .... good and bad...
Ten year old Hunter wrote,"this website is intersting but you complain to much [sic]" Oh, well. Sorry Hunter.
"I live approximately 1000 ft from (a proposed) landfill.. It over looks our city and is in a highly residential area surrounding most of this site. There are also 3 schools within less than 1/2 a mile... our concerns fall on deaf ears.... " --Cara
"It's Deja Vous all over again." -- Yogi Berra We hear this over and over again.
"I wrote a comment a few months without a reply to come back from those devoted web page designers [sic]." [obscene from there as were several other emails.] -- Jordan OUR RULES: This is a family site. We use anonymous screen names and editing. Email to us becomes the property of thedumpsite. We welcome reasoned comment, questions, and criticism. We don't respond to spam and flamers.
This school child asked us a simple question. Others ask similar questions.
"can I get sick because i live near a landfill?"-- Scared kid. Dallastown Area School District
What honest answer can we give? Maybe? Not if things go ok? They don't think so? No (lie about it?) Yes (and scare her to death?) University studies report vast amounts of suitable, open land in the US. What an unnecessary, obscene situation to put a child in TO SAVE OR MAKE A FEW BUCKS!
THE COMPLAINT SYSTEM -- A couple of the many landfill Catch-22s
Catch 22 # 1 -- Landfills change rapidly. By the time an official arrives to check on a complaint in a day or so there's nothing to see or smell. The official record says, "Responded to complaint. Saw nothing."
They appear to be doing their job but, in reality, do nothing about the root problem and we look like whiners.
WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION - NO INSPECTION HAS EVER REPORTED ANY of THIS.
If we had not been on the job, it would be flatly denied today by High Point and NC DENR Solid Waste officials.
Kersey Valley would have a spotless inspection record that officials and their lawyers wouldn't hesitate to wave around in court and SWEAR on a bible it was true. In fact, they already did.
A COLOSSAL LIE TO THE COURTS, THE PUBLIC, AND OUR CHILDREN...
If your grandchild does graduate school research on NC landfills in 20 years, there'll be no city or state record like this to get an accurate picture of what this landfill was like. The only accurate chronicle in existence is what's on thedumpsite.
Kids tempted to pick up a filthy teddy bear can pick up more at Kersey Valley. Should kids have to navigate through this when they get off a schoolbus to save High Point transportation costs to a more isolated site?
Walking home after getting off a school bus shouldn't be a bio-chemical hazard obstacle course.
a 14 year study of Kersey Valley Landfill operated by the City of High Point, NC.
GRISLY GARBAGE ON OUR ROADS
Spilled garbage, garbage juice, and mud is left on our roads by landfill traffic. A filthy muck of items from disposable diapers to condoms, and teddy bears. To clean the roads, a water truck pushes it to the shoulder. There is remains until... well, look at the grass growing through the condom shown below right.
OUR RECOMMENDATION? The simple, logical solution for everyone is to keep landfills AWAY from people.
University studies show there is plenty of minimal human impact, OPEN area available for landfills but hauling garbage (and dirt) to more suitable areas costs money. MAKE MONEY is the prime directive of landfills so powerful town officials built Kersey Valley in a nearby residential area just out of town in extraterritorial jurisdiction occupied areas giving them unlimited zoning power and disenfranchised voters that can't retaliate in the voting booth. Areas populated by the elderly and poor who are least able to afford or least likely to fight back. This was NOT accidental.
View from the main public highway down the entrance road to another NC landfill. The nearest home is over a mile away.
A forest is behind the camera.
View from the main public highway down
the entrance road to Kersey Valley.
The nearest home is 184 FEET away.
A residential area is behind the camera.
MAKE-IT-UP-AS-YOU-GO LANDFILL PROGRAM #5 -- We dubbed it THE KERSEY RULE
"Kersey Valley landfill must prevail no matter the cost..... to others."
MAKE-IT-UP-AS-YOU-GO PROGRAM --- #2These photos are legally meaningless to NC DENR.
NC AG Nancy Scott insisted to us that officials must personally SEE a landfill violation to take action. Photos won't do. NC authorizes robot cameras as proof enough to issue traffic violation tickets. Police, FBI and SBI routinely use unmanned cameras as evidence against lawbreakers. DENR and AG office officials don't embrace these standards for landfills.
to be here. Do all those homes on the photo look heavy industrial? Poweful extraterritorial jurisdiction law robs NC citizens' right to vote on elected officials' actions that affect them or for the officials. Using this insulated power of occupationwesayso, High Point's puppet zoning officials island hopped a mile away to try to justify this area as heavy industrial for their political bosses.
ACTUAL DOOR-TO-DOOR NEIGHBORHOOD CENSUS
found 232 homes and 535 people within 1/2 mile of Kersey Valley. 24 school busses a day pass Kersey Valley. 20 school bus stops are within yards of its gates. Does that sound heavy industrial? Setbacks apply only to garbage. Heavy industrial activity has NO setback.
<< click to enlarge
Don't be conned by the dump's harmless appearance from a mile overhead. Every inch has been exposed garbage often over nights, weekends and holidays.
We didn't have to go touring down the road searching for shocking pictures of Kersey Valley. They brought them to us. Most photos here were made right from our home. Officials refused to compensate us for this, hiding behind a statute of limitations loophole and sloppy permitting and enforcement paperwork. In earlier times they might have gotten away with it from lack of publicity, but this time there was a cost they didn't anticipate in their planning, engineering, or legal estimates.
Us, persistence, and their vast underestimation of the rapidly advancing power of the internet. THAT'S YOU!
"[The internet makes it] a whole different ball-game now." -- creator of controversial "1984 Clinton" political ad.
Welcome! Join over 137,200 visitors who've seen the truth about Kersey Valley landfill.
A report form for an NC DENR inspection for Kersey Valley is shown. It says in part,
"A water truck was observed in operation and there was no road dust resulting from the construction or landfill operations. No violations noted." --Text of dust portion of NC DENR landfill inspection below left. (click to enlarge images)
TWO NORTH CAROLINA LANDFILLS --
A picture is worth a thousand words" --old saying
1998 Used Latex glove 1998 Soiled Diaper 1998 Dead rat 1998 Used Condom
Kept hands away from something. We know what this contains. Some dump rats don't make it. Potential disease carrier.
View from our front door of a water truck passing our house.
LANDFILLS shouldn't be in RESIDENTIAL AREAS, especially near KIDS, the ELDERLY and INFIRM!
Officials don't control their off site effects anywhere near good enough for that!
Our years of photos disagree sharply with official wesayso. You decide...
Willie The Whale invites toddlers School busses stop six times Just pals.Thier entire lives spent Kids and a dog walking home
for a aplash just a few yards from a day here. Gate is at the poles growing up in the shadow of from a bus stop at Kersey Valley
Kersey Valley garbage. Kersey Valley is background. Kersey Valley. is a hazardous gauntlet.
LANDFILL INSPECTIONS: MAKE-IT-UP-AS-YOU-GO PROGRAM --- #1
Officials point to NC DENR landfill inspections as PROOF of excellence. Courts consider them to be the final official government word on landfill quality and the legal presumption is that these forms are correct.
Photos right were from our home in the middle of the inspector's visit. These dust plumes and many more drifted over and into our home. HERE is more of the photo comparison HERE is how NC measures up with the EPA ADEQUACY RULE
High Point officials are using and NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources officials are allowing setbacks from a 1980 permit obtained 13 years ahead of time to weasel around modern environmental standards used today! 1980 setbacks at Kersey Valley!
MAKE-IT-UP-AS-YOU-GO LANDFILL PROGRAM #4 -- Permit conditions or permit suggestions?
NC officials issue tickets for not being safe by not wearing a seat belt. But using those setbacks NC DENR officials claimed a mountain of raw garbage could be dumped 57 feet from an elderly widow's well.
Rather than take the widow's side, NC Assistant Attorney General Nancy Scott argued in court that it's OK AND High Point officials didn't think she or we were important enough to install the visual buffers to block our view of the dump, even though they are required by permit. DENR Solid Waste officials did nothing through the whole sordid episode!!
UPSET? US? SUSPICIOUS? US? You think?
WE'VE BEEN ALL OVER WITH OUR MESSAGE --
We've had interest from many states, towns and counties, "think tanks" and universities in The Phillipines, Scotland, Switzerland, Belgium, Malaysia, Tailand, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, India, France, Italy, UAE, Bahrain, Libya, Lebanon, Romania, Canada, England, Spain, Argentina, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, Brazil, Israel, Bolivia, Syria, Trinidad, Denmark, Bosnia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Poland, Taiwan, Russia, Austria, Columbia, Chile, Bahamas, and more. Too many to name.
(With a name like thedumpsite, no doubt we attracted some spooks too... ours and theirs.)
Thanks folks!! thedumpsite is THE PLACE to learn the truth about living near the LANDFILL in High Point, NC.
WHY thedumpsite?
More important than immediate relief for us is to make sure thedumpsite true story gets in the record
At some time, perhaps not even in our lifetime, what has really happened in and to this area and its people will become a critical issue to government, an organization, the media, or others.
Very grave questions will be asked and many dollars will be at stake. Officials will most certainly try to weasel out of it.
We want to help make sure that, at that time, there will be a full accounting to our children.
Early Kersey Valley History and Location
Kersey Vallely is located on the shores of the Randleman Lake regional water source (map HERE), near a MRR C&D dump, two other unlined High Point dumps and a Seaboard Chemical Superfund Site (Impaired Streams Map HERE).
Red lines below show Kersey Valley boundary. To beat the law, most lines trace a state landfill permit obtained 13 years before it was even opened.The yellow X shows the present epicenter. Using these antiquated rules, officials forced Kersey Valley into our community of disenfranchised voters with 50 foot setbacks, dumping garbage obscenely close to homes and wells. Screening was a permit condition but wasn't done or enforced. The area had to be zoned heavy industrial
Toward our front door after water truck passed our house.
Catch 22 # 2 --If no official complaints are filed, officials are quick to use it to rationalize inaction because they "didn't know anything was wrong." This is in spite of their highly touted "surprise landfill inspections" and the self-policing, self-regulating, albeit "wolf in the hen house policy," granted to landfill operators the 99.3% of time between inspections.
They claim, our photos don't count.
Although, it seems to be good enough for stores, banks and others.
2002 Used Condom 2002 Syringe 2002 Teddy Bear 2002 Teddy Bear close
Another one. What was this biohazard used for? Would you want your child to be tempted by this?
Or, links to many kinds of photo galleries are at bottom of page.
RESPONSES from OFFICIALS to our COMPLAINTS ABOUT the CITY of HIGH POINT KERSEY VALLEY LANDFILL
"Which way was the wind blowing?" -- NCDENR landfill inspector's response to noise, odor, and dust complaints.
"It doesn't smell any worse than my garbage toter."-- High Point Planning Director's response to noise, odor, and dust complaints.
"What do you expect? It's a landfill." -- High Point Mayor's response to noise, odor, and dust complaints.
"It's gotta go somewhere." -- High Point Public Services Director's response to noise, odor, and dust complaints.
"Kersey Valley landfill complies with all regulations." -- Numerous state and local sources in response to noise, odor, and dust complaints.
REALITY:The Kersey Valley odor plume can extend far beyond the landfill. We have studied it for years. MAP SOON.
REALITY: Years of study also shows Kersey Valley's noise plume extends far beyond it too. MAP SOON.
REALITY: Photomicrographs, past and present, of Kersey Valley dust far beyond the landfill. PHOTOS SOON.
IN 2007, A NEW PERMITTING PROCESS IS UNDERWAY - - -
Our 14 year photo record of Kersey Valley conflicts with official's rose colored claims and optimistic reports.
Should this be investigated and, if verified, influence the permit process underway? We think so.
Since ordinary photos are not good enough, we used another approach. We endured but intensely documented events for an extended period and submited overwhelming documentation to the media along with complaints.
Such gargantuan effort had positive effect a few times.
In a recent 2007 case ...
SANFORD, N.C. -- Fifteen Lee County High School students were arrested Wednesday after video showing fighting in a boys' bathroom was posted on YouTube.com. The students were charged with disorderly conduct on a school campus. -- News Services
YouTube video is good enough to make arrests but photos submitted directly to a state regulatory agency by a 36 year veteran state environmental investigator are not even worthy of a public wrist slap.
There's NOTHING like thedumpsite because NOTHING LIKE IT has ever been done!
Through the entire life history of Kersey Valley landfill and surroundings---
>It describes resident's experiences on the front lines.
>It compares official's and expert's claims anddocuments to reality.
>It quotesresident's notes, comments, and diarys as it happened.
>It chronicles conditions on and around Kersey Valley with photo after photo.
>It exposes siting and zoning trickery in poorer, disenfranchised residential areas.
>It debunks exaggerated claims of excellence made by officials.
>It unmasks and reveals landfill myth after landfill myth.
School kids and a toddler play
while a school bus passes the dump gate a few feet away.
Kersey Valley looms in background.
MAKE-IT-UP-AS-YOU-GO LANDFILL PROGRAM #3 -- No Reasonable Person Test. Applied
What would a reasonable person do under similar circumstances?
=Everyone knows that, until something better comes along, we must have landfills.
=Dust, noise, odor, spilled garbage and its juice, vermin, etc. are expected at landfills.
"What do you expect? It's a landfill." -- High Point Mayor Rebecca Smothers, Landfill Hearing
=Landfill liners can and do fail, poisoning an area's water table. Officials gamble it won't but we're the guinea pigs.
=Common failure remedies used, like long term outpumping area aquifers, can destroy local water supplies.
=NIMBY is because people (officials too) don't want to live near and don't trust guinea pigging next to these effects.
DON'T KID YOURSELF! MONEY COUNTS ALL AROUND!
"If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can't imagine what they would do to people do not have the resources to defend themselves."
--Reade Seligmann, accused Duke lacrosse player after being totally cleared of all charges by the NC Attorney General.
(Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, N.J., Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y., and Evans, 24, of Bethesda, Md., all come from well-to-do families.)
X
Kersey Valley
landfill epicenter
SOON!! ANOTHER VIEW!! FOR 14 YEARS IT HAS PERMEATED EVERYTHING ABOUT US AND OUR HOMES.
IT'S IN OUR LUNGS AND
IN OUR CHILDREN'S LUNGS!
COMING! ACTUAL PHOTOMICROGRAPHS OF KERSEY VALLEY LANDFILL DUST
