The trucks come seven days a week, neighbors say, in the light of day and in the dark of night.

Loaded with dirt, construction debris, rebar and who knows what other unknown waste, they travel on narrow, windy roads and dump their dirty cargo on a private piece of property in Vernon Township, in the most rural part of the state.

Over the past 10 years in the far northern part of the state, a new “mountain” has slowly taken shape: a sprawling waste pile that now consumes two acres and rises seven stories tall. It’s a towering plateau of dirt and fill in the middle of a secluded neighborhood.

No one can say what exactly is in the pile or if it poses a danger to the community. But when it rains, the waste turns to mud and spills its mysterious brew onto neighboring properties, potentially polluting the groundwater that feeds wells, critics claim.

But despite pressure from residents, local officials and a congressman, no local, county or state officials have been able to stop the trucks from coming and dumping their waste.

“It’s described as a dirt pile, but it’s really a waste mountain,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer,( D-5th Dist.), who has been voicing the growing concerns of neighbors.

As the pile grows, so does the desperation of people in the neighborhood. In recent weeks, they have become more forceful in fighting the problem, holding protests and rallies, calling legislators and speaking out.

Last month, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, more than 50 people gathered near the property to protest. That rally came after Rep. Gottheimer, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Catherine McCabe, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2 head Pete Lopez visited the site in December.

Since the protest, neighbors say they’ve seen state officials testing dirt that spilled off the pile and onto other properties. And just last week, about 25 people rallied in front of the DEP branch office in Cedar Knolls.

Vernon township police received more than 190 calls involving Joseph Wallace’s property on Silver Spruce Drive, where the pile is located, from October 21, 2015 to November 20, 2018. Of those calls, at least 180 were related to complaints about the dumping.

Still, one unanswered question remains. How was this all allowed to happen in the first place?

Site of alleged illegal dumping operation in a residential neighborhood off Silver Spruce Drive. Vernon, N.J. Dec 3, 2018. (Andre Malok | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Rising Tension

To Wallace, a former auto mechanic who owns the property where the mountain of construction fill and dirt grows by the day, it is much ado about nothing, he said.

“I live here. I have nine dogs of mine that run the property,” Wallace said. “If I thought there was something in there that was going to harm anything, I wouldn’t.”

He dismisses the notion that there is any contaminated or unsafe material in the artificial mountain. Everything being brought in, he insists, is clean. Yet he acknowledged he has convictions in New York on multiple counts of illegal dumping.

Vernon, a small town of about 20,000 people, is nestled in an idyllic valley along the New York border in the heart of New Jersey’s Highlands region. Outside of Sussex County, Vernon is probably best known as the home of Mountain Creek, New Jersey’s largest ski area. Wallace’s property sits in a neighborhood of five homes centered around a private road called Silver Spruce Drive. It’s a quiet, heavily wooded area sheltered from busier streets, surrounded by other neighborhoods.

The stream of dump trucks coming to Silver Spruce dates at least to 2011, when Wallace says he began trucking in material to repair property damage from Hurricane Irene. By 2014, he had pulled back from his mechanic work and was increasingly reliant on excavation and landscape work for income, he says. Since then, the number of dump trucks has surged.

The trucks careen down Vernon’s winding mountain roads, including the aptly named Breakneck Road and County Route 515, one of the steepest roads in the state. Every time a truck turns onto Silver Spruce, it drives past a large silver sign with red letters announcing “STOP WORK ORDER IN EFFECT NO FILL MATERIAL.”

Last May, a dump truck flipped in Vernon after the truck’s brakes had failed while traveling down the area’s steep declines, according to a New Jersey Herald report. The accident injured one person. Though the driver did not say he was headed to the Wallace property, the wreck further convinced residents that a tragedy could happen at any time.

But the trucks are not the neighbor’s main concern.

All of Wallace’s neighbors use wells for their drinking water. For them, uncertainty about what may be in the pile means uncertainty about what may be leaching into the surrounding groundwater from the waste pile.

Water that was running off Wallace’s waste pile and onto a neighboring property was tested last August by Mike Furrey, the head of Vernon’s Environmental Commission. The test results showed the water contained 78 parts per billion of lead; the federal drinking water standard is 15 parts per billion, according to Furrey.

Lead exposure, even in tiny amounts, can cause health problems. Furrey said that lead does not occur naturally in surface water or groundwater, so the contamination must have come from the pile.

Furrey has tested the wells of Wallace’s neighbors. So far, no wells have shown high lead levels. And state officials have called into question the quality of the runoff water test revealing high lead levels.

“A single test of ‘roadway runoff’ that was provided to the DEP by Mr. Wallace’s neighbor in October 2018 does not provide reliable evidence, due to the lack of information showing that reliable sampling protocols and methods were employed in obtaining and analyzing the sample,” McCabe wrote in a letter to Gottheimer last month.

But that has done little to allay the worries of neighbors.

Jenny Higgins, one of Wallace’s neighbors, said that she takes her youngest son to a friend’s house to bathe, and has taught her two older boys to take quick showers to reduce exposure to water that she doesn’t trust.

Higgins, who brought her family to Vernon in 2014, said that if she had known about the dumping, she never would’ve moved in.

Neighbors have turned to local, state and federal officials for help. Wallace’s dumping has become a fixture of the public comment portions of Vernon town council meetings and Sussex County freeholder meetings. Dozens of complaints have been called into the DEP’s hotline.

The outcry stretches beyond Sussex County. On Thursday, Vernon Mayor Harry Shortway testified before the state Senate Environment and Energy Committee in Trenton to tell state lawmakers about the situation as they consider new solid waste regulations for New Jersey. And the neighbors have found a powerful ally in Rep. Gottheimer, who has become a champion of their cause.

The first attempts to address the pile came in 2014, when the Sussex County Soil Conservation District took the rare step of issuing a stop work order to Wallace. Since then, Wallace has been fined $75,000 for violating that order.

It was not the first time Wallace has faced fines. He’s pled guilty to six counts of illegal dumping in New York in 2017 and he faces heavy penalties for more than 70 municipal summonses.

Through all of this, Vernon residents and officials have been pleading with the DEP to step in and at least test the material in Wallace’s pile for any possible public health effects.

“If this soil was not contaminated, I’m sure that they would have taken it somewhere much closer to where it came from instead of hauling it all the way up here to Vernon,” Charles Voelker, Vernon’s business administrator, wrote in a complaint to the DEP on April 21, 2018.

Public records show that the DEP has been receiving complaints about Wallace’s dumping since at least 2014. In response, the state has made multiple visits to the site and has sent a few warning emails to Wallace.

“[DEP] inspectors continue to investigate 3 Silver Spruce Drive, known as the Wallace Property, to ensure compliance with state environmental regulations,” DEP spokesman Larry Hajna told NJ Advance Media in a statement. “Inspectors from various compliance and enforcement units within DEP have been to the property on more than 20 occasions over the past four years and continue to monitor the property.”

The DEP has repeatedly told local officials that the dirt pile is not a state issue and that it doesn’t believe Wallace is violating any state regulations.

“The [DEP] should be ashamed of themselves,” Shortway said. “They have criticized and insulted the county and this township, and our residents. They do not do their job.”

Beyond citizen complaints and requests from local officials, the most intense source of pressure on the DEP has come from Gottheimer.

For months, the congressman has questioned the DEP’s response.

“You cannot just truck in and dump solid waste and create a waste mountain and put the community at risk,” Gottheimer said.

The congressman first sent a letter to the DEP last August, asking the department to conduct sample testing of the pile. Since then, the congressman has gone back and forth with DEP Commissioner McCabe.

A New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection official views the site of an alleged illegal dumping operation in a residential neighborhood off Silver Spruce Drive. Vernon, N.J. Dec 3, 2018. (Andre Malok | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Meanwhile, concerned citizens have organized. A Facebook group called Sussex County Residents Affected By “The Landfill”has more than 1,600 members as of Feb. 11.

Martin O’Donnell, a leader of particularly active group of about 80 residents called Vernon PAID, said that the group has raised more than $2,000 since the start of January. Yard signs and t-shirts made by Vernon PAID are an increasingly common sight in town.

Then on Feb. 8, about 25 members of the group rallied in front of the NJDEP’s branch office in Cedar Knolls to protest what they see as a lack of action by the state.

“Vernon is the town that New Jersey forgot,” said Joe Sireno, a Vernon resident, while he held a sign that morning.

Shortway is worried about what might happen if no one is able to stop Wallace.

“Our residents are so frustrated, and we don’t want anything escalating to violence,” Shortway said.

Joseph Wallace is allegedly running an illegal dumping operation in a residential neighborhood off Silver Spruce Drive. Vernon, N.J. Dec 3, 2018. (Andre Malok | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Taking advantage

Wallace purchased his home on Silver Spruce Drive in 1999. He used to be the owner of auto mechanic shops in town that are now closed, and he once provided towing services for the Vernon Police Department. Today, Wallace said that landscaping and excavating projects are his main sources of income.

According to Wallace, the pile on his property began growing in the early 2000’s, as he moved dirt around on his own property while flattening other sections.

But the dirt pile really began to grow, Wallace said, after Hurricane Irene drenched New Jersey. Wallace said that he had a significant wash-out on his property, and that he took advantage of an emergency order signed by formed Gov. Chris Christie to make repairs.

Wallace said the DEP told him in 2011 that he was allowed to bring in dirt and fill for his pile under the emergency declaration. To Wallace, this permission from the state holds authority over any local actions.

“As far as I’m concerned, [the DEP] up here said I can do it,” Wallace said. “As far as I’m concerned, Vernon is down here. So I’m going to do what [the DEP] said.”

At this point, Wallace said anything he adds to the pile is for stabilization --- even though he says he doesn’t have any engineering plans.

He added that he’s almost done working on the pile, though he won’t give a timeline for completion.

In response to questions about the criticism from neighbors and officials, Wallace said he believes that he has been vilified in town. He describes the Vernon police department as being made up of “politicians.” And he thinks that the actual politicians in town are searching for ways to force him out of Vernon.

When asked about his previous convictions in New York on multiple counts of illegal dumping, Wallace said he only pled guilty because he didn’t want to fight the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, an agency he called “organized crime.”

A dump truck at Wallace's property on Silver Spruce Drive in Vernon, N.J. Dec 3, 2018. (Andre Malok | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Wallace will not say where he is getting the dirt from.

However, Jamie Keenan, a woman who said she lived with Wallace for five years before moving to the village of Florida, New York, said Wallace was getting paid to take the truckloads of dirt, and then getting paid again by selling it to people looking for fill.

Keenan said that when Wallace began, he was making $150 for every truck that unloaded at the property.

“He’d get paid more to take the ugly dirt,” Keenan said. “Bricks, concrete, stuff like that.”

Wallace flatly denies that he gets paid to take fill in, insisting that the opposite is true: he is paying for the dirt.

But he is making money moving dirt elsewhere, he said, because his primary source of income is his landscaping business.

Wallace has told the DEP where some of the fill originated and has given state inspectors lab-work to prove that the stuff he’s moving in is clean. The DEP has on occasion questioned the quality of this analysis, public records show, but the paperwork ties Wallace’s pile to dirt from the site of a Costco in Wayne, a commercial development in Queens and even John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Some of Wallace’s neighbors have followed dump trucks to and from Wallace’s property, tracking them from a gas station in Mansfield that was swapping out underground storage tanks, a water facility in Plainfield and a construction site in North Bergen.

Site of alleged illegal dumping operation in a residential neighborhood off Silver Spruce Drive. Vernon, N.J. Dec 3, 2018. (Andre Malok | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Shortway’s biggest fear is that Wallace will one day simply take off, leaving the massive pile to be dealt with by the town.

Meanwhile, Wallace is in foreclosure.

On Dec. 18, Sussex Superior Court Judge Robert Brennan decided that Wallace, who is more than $600,000 behind on his mortgage, will lose his home in order to make up the debt to the bank.

If that happens, no one is quite sure what will happen to the massive dirt pile that Wallace has spent so many years building at the property.

This story was updated at 4:00 p.m. to reflect that Vernon Township Mayor Harry Shortway testified before the state Senate Environment and Energy Committee on Thursday, Feb. 14.

Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MSolDub. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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