A Pittston Township Family's Story: 1989 through 2009
First of all, our family has lived in Pittston Township in the SAME house for over 110 years. Our neighborhood was once a wonderful place to live. Things have changed.

Our neighborhood was without any trouble that we were aware of until one of the longtime residents sold their house and the house was purchased by an employee of Pittston Township. This employee carries a certain amount of clout in the Township.

The clout first became apparent back in early 1992. We had heard about a PennDot highway project up near the Pittston Plaza in the fall of 1991. Because our house had, at the time, a very tiny back yard situated near a precipice, and because our child was very young at the time, we contaced PennDot and asked if we could have the excess dirt that we heard was to be dug up at the site. Yes, we were told. Simply fill out a release form, get permission from your neighbor, and we'll dump the dirt behind your property when we start digging.

We told our next door neighbor about this and received her permission for the trucks contracted by PennDot to pass over a small piece of her property to get to ours. Unfortunately, she told a relative of hers up the street who had befriended the new neighbor with the clout and the the connections.

When the PennDot project began in late February of 1992 we noticed the trucks were going, with the dirt, to our neighbors relative's and to the new neighbor with the connections and clout who lived next door to the neighbor's relative. We decided to be patient, not say a thing, and wait. And so we waited throughout February, March and part of April 1992 for the trucks to come to our house, as promised.

Finally, in early or mid-April 1992 we approached the supervisor employed by the PennDot subcontractor, showed him the paper we had signed from PennDot, and asked if his trucks could please drop the dirt off at our house so we could have more of a yard for our still quite young child. The supervisor looked ashamed and apologized to us, but he informed us he could not do that for us unless we had the "permission" of the brother of our neighbor with connections. You guessed it - the brother was another high ranking Pittston Township employee with plenty of clout and the ability to make things nasty for the trucking company - who was illegally transporting hugh trucks with dirt and without a tarp down residential street. (We didn't understand this at the time, but learned about the illegality later on through research.)

Permission? From a Pittston Township employee who had nothing to do with the project but who had the ability to make it miserable for the trucking company and foreman/supervisor. Hmmm.

To make a long story short, we returned several times over a period of weeks to ask this supervisor, who seemed to be a very nice man, to please reconsider. Everyone knew we were upset about not getting this dirt for our child's yard. Our next-door neighbor, who signed the permission slip for the trucks to pass over the small area of her property to get to ours, said she had no control over her relative and was sorry for what was going on.

The neighbor who was getting the dirt came down the street one day and accused my husband of "trying to steal HER dirt." It was insane.

FINALLY, the foreman started delivering dirt to us..for one day. THEN the sign was put up, by a Pittston Township road crew, only 10 feet from where the trucks had to enter our property: "NO TRUCKS" allowed. We could NOT believe our eyes.

The next day the sign was taken down. We can only assume that someone must have suggested that such a move was too obvious an abuse of power. Finally, after 3 months of begging, we got the tail end of the deliveries. Not nearly enough to make a yard.

My husband and I did our best to purchase fill and do what we could to make more of the yard. But it was an enoumous task and buying enough dirt to fill in such a precipice was beyond our means.

In 1995, the same thing happened involving free dirt. A new highway project was impending, again state funded, and again we were denied dirt. This time we didn't know in advance that the dirt was going to be available. But when a neighbor came to our back door and told us that the trucks would be coming, but NOT to request dirt because they "knew someone" and were getting the dirt but would make sure WE got some this time, as well, we believed them. (This neighbor, and another next to them, had NOT received any of the dirt in 1992 and were NOT happy about it, but anyone in Pittston Township with a brain cell knows better than to complain!) And so we trusted and we waited. And waited. By now we had another child who was approaching her first birthday, and really wanted our yard completed.

Unfortunately, we were tricked and the dirt never came our way. At one point one of the truck drivers, observing that the line of our property was now very uneven (our house receding far in from the other four neighbors who had gotten the dirt in 1992 and now 1995), suggest that he begin filling in our property. The brother of the neighbor getting the dirt said "Don't worry about them."

My husband was furious about this but knew enough not to say a word to the neighbor. But we'd had enough. The next day I called the contractor and asked if we could please have some of the dirt that every one on the block had gotten in the past few years except us. The man at the company who was contracted by PennDot was furious when he heard our neighbors were getting dirt delivered between their houses, which were both very close together and it wsa hazardous for a truck to pass so close by a home. The company's insurance forbade such a thing, he said. He told me he was calling his foreman to immediately stop the deliveries.

Knowing the fallout that would occur, I begged him NOT to do such a thing. But he refused to listen. Apparently, he immediatedly called and stopped ALL trucks from going to any house.

That was one of the worst mornings of my life. I went outside after I heard shovels digging in a small pile of dirt that had spilled from our neighbors yard to ours. When I asked what this man and his son were doing, he replied that "SOMEBODY called and stopped the trucks." I informed him that I had called to ask for a share of the dirt. But that I didn't stop the trucks and only called to see why my family and I were not getting the dirt that his family had said we were going to get after we were told, by his family, not to call - that they would see that we got our share. This man and his adult son flew into a rage. He approached me near our fence, while I was holding my infant, and started screaming at me. When I turned to go into the house at quite a rapid pace he yelled after to me, "You'd better run before I cut your lets off."

Because I was alone with the baby (my husband was out of town working), I was really afraid for the safety of my baby and myself. Calling the Pittston Township was out of the question. They had been aware of our situation for a long time and we had reason to believe that it was quite the joke - our failed efforts to get dirt - in certain Township circles.

I decided to call the Luzerne County Court House and ask to speak to someone there. After a difficult hour or so, a detective called back. When I told him what had happened, he wanted to come up and arrest the man who had threatened me. I said no, please, just please make a record of this so that if anything happens it's on record. I then called my nephew who spent the day with me and my baby until my husband could come home from work.

For the next three or four years, we used our OWN funds, and free fill when we could find it and with NO help from the Township, and blood, sweat and tears to make our own haven for our children in the back of our home. It was beautiful for a few short years after completion between 1998 and 1999. The yard was now fenced-in with a small black-topped area for basketball and a net that my husband had placed on top of the chain-link fence to prevent the ball from going into a neighbor's yard.

So the years went by. Our elder child was nearly 14 when we finished his yard. Sadly, the yard, which we had begun to work on when he was only 2, was no longer necessary for him. He no longer had a desire to play in his own backyard very often, but we had a 4 year old now who did. And so for three more years she enjoyed her little paradise.

And then came 2002, and more abuse of power and public trust in Pittston Township...now we didn't want or need dirt. Our yard was beautiful, albeit very modest...for a few more months until...

In the spring of 2002 the same Pittston Township official, whose salary is paid by taxpayers such as ourselves. decided to "allow" huge dump trucks laden with UNCOVERED dirt (again, we believe this is illegal in Pennsylvania) to come to OUR property and dump dirt - tons and tons and tons of dirt. Mountains of dirt.

The dirt came from the huge slag heap up being cleared througout the Spring and Summer of 2002 at the Pittston Plaza. It came via a local trucking company and the smaller trucking companies who were, we believe, subcontracted by this particular trucking company. The huge slag heap, several stories high, was being cleared and relocated to our backyard, and the backyards of our neighbors, to make way for (we found out later after the 21,0000 sq. foot structure was built) the new Verizon MSC (mobile switching center) which was later built on the cleared site by Deklewa corporation.

The thousands of truckloads traveled down the Pittston By-Pass, through our narrow residential street, and onto our property near the beautifully excavated and finished back yard. The trucks dumped their load on our property, had another vehicle pound it down, and then came back and back and back.

The huge trucks came, nonstop, all day long from morning until about 5PM, from April thru August 2002. Our daughter, who was seven at the time, was unable to play in her own backyard during the morning and afternoon hours that entire summer. And every summer since - and you'd know why if you saw our backyard now.

When "they" were done dumping dirt, AND building the beginnings of a read-access road across our private property to the Pittston Township official's BROTHER's house (who is also on the payroll), our much loved basketball court and long-awaited yard began to settle and crumble. By the next spring it was in cracked and in crumbled tiers.

When the trucks rolled on through our property in 2002...everyone on the street grumbled and wondered about this...but kept quiet about it for the most part. (We later heard that one neighbor, at least, complained but was reprimanded. He now refuses to talk about is. No wonder.) But in the end everyone BUT US got their land excavated and any damage fixed.

As is the case in settling, it took several months for the damage to begin to show. In 2003, the damage sustained to our property became very apparent: our yard, after settling for a year, was cracked all over. Our basketball court was unusable, and looked like steps instead of a court.

We called the Pittston Township office and sent a letter to the municipal building in Pittston Township, but it wasn't acknowledged. Finally, in early 2004, we went to a meeting and complained. The supervisors tried to act like they weren't aware of the problem, or even of all the thousands of truck which had passed thru the area right by the borough building when all this was going on. They asked the employee who allowed trucks to ruin our property what had happened. To us it looked very rehearsed.

HOW COULD PITTSTON TOWNSHIP SUPERVISORS NOT KNOW THERE WAS A LITERAL MOUNTAIN OF DIRT BEING MOVED FROM PITTSTON PLAZA TO OUR NEARBY STREET? AND HOW COULD ONE EMPLOYEE OF PITTSTON TOWNSHIP HAVE THE CLOUT TO DECIDE TO INVADE PRIVATE PROPERTY AND BUILD A REAR ACCESS ROAD WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE SUPERVISORS??

IT TOOK ABOUT 12 TRUCKS PER HOUR, 8 HOURS A DAY, 4 MONTHS for this to happen!

To keep us quiet, promises of repair were made by one specifio supervisor visit our yard and make things right. The rest agreed.

Since early 2004 we have been waiting for the promise made by the Pittston Township Supervisors - to fix our yard - to be made good. It has NOT happened. When we called this particular supervisor to ask when the repair work would be done, he reneged. He said that if they fix OUR property, the run-off (which we NOW get from our next-door neighbor's rain) might damage our NEIGHBORS property. Later on, when my husband confronted this supervisor in person, he said he would do NOTHING for us.

We contacted an attorney. This attorney came to our house. One of our neighbors came over to our house, complained long and hard about our clouted neighbor, stated his suspicions about many of this man's activities, and listened to everything we had to say. No doubt he was simply spying, or perhaps thought better of going against the grain, because he never gave our attorney his official statement as he promised that day. He was, by the way, the neighbot who had threatened to cut off my legs nearly ten years before. Unfortunately, I tried hard to believe he had changed and was remorseful for the pain he'd caused me.

The four neighbors who got dirt knew what we went through in this township, but why should they care? They were NOT treated as we were. Their yards are in fine shape. Each yard was granted dirt and excavated free of charge. And they all know better than to challenge the powers that be in this township. Most of us have much in common: we are all the same religion (Catholic), the same age group (middle-aged with children and/or grandchildren), same modest, older homes. There is ONE difference.

This web site is our way of letting the story be told and hoping someday the PITTSTON TOWNSHIP SUPERVISORS will make good on their promose to FIX OUR YARD and correct a wrongdoing by one who had NO PERMISSION to trespass on AND destroy our property and who has gone UNPUNISHED for this deed.

Write to: PittstonTownship@yahoo.com and we will forward your e-mail.

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