Junkyard holdout fights to keep land

Challenges petition to sell properties to pay for cleanup

By most accounts, William Allen has been masterful at acquiring junk. Now, the feisty 79-year-old is learning about fighting for his land.

Allen has battled the town of Essex for three decades over a junkyard at his Southern Avenue house, set amid a string of antique shops near the picturesque downtown. A dilapidated refrigerator, pile of tires, overflowing dumpster, and several heavy trucks mark the front and side of the property these days. Officials are not sure what else is behind them.

Over the next week, Allen will challenge a petition to place another Essex property he owns up for sale to pay for cleanup of his Southern Avenue homestead. He also will face the auction of a house he owns in Ipswich.

Bills have come due for years of unpaid taxes on one front and for mountains of disputed debris on the other.

In Ipswich, authorities say Allen has not paid taxes on his dilapidated Lafayette Road house since 1990. With $99,200 due on the century-old, eight-room house near the seaside community's downtown, Massachusetts Land Court awarded the property to the town last fall. It is slated to be auctioned at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Ipswich Town Hall.

In Essex, authorities say Allen has tied them in knots over a massive, state-ordered cleanup of his Southern Avenue junkyard.

With an estimated $100,000 needed for the cleanup, officials have asked an Essex Superior Court judge to authorize the sale of a 10-acre wooded parcel that Allen owns in another section of Essex to pay the bill. A hearing is slated for Monday.

"I run a repair shop to do old cars and trucks, and I have for 60 years on this same piece of property," Allen said of his 1.4-acre Southern Avenue property. "Maybe I am, a little bit, not keeping my house as clean as it should be or as neat as it should be . . . and now they want to take that away from me."

Local health and state environmental officials tell a different story.

Heaps of rusted metal, along with tons of trash and oil that oozed out of decades-old vehicles, created an environmental and health hazard on the property near the Essex River, officials said. Since 2002, Essex Superior Court Justice Peter W. Agnes Jr. has issued dozens of orders directing Allen to clean it up.

Agnes also authorized the sale of yet another house Allen owned less than a mile away from the disputed Essex site to cover the cleanup costs. That raised $240,000 in November 2004, records show.

Authorities hauled more than 100 tires, 50 tons of trash, at least a dozen rusted trailers and trucks, and roughly 70 gallons of petroleum products from the Southern Avenue property, court records show.

The cleanup fund has dwindled to under $1,000, and there is still a lot more work to do.

Officials say they can replenish the pool if the court will authorize the sale of Allen's 10-acre wooded lot for $125,000.

But Allen's lawyer, Mike McArdle, said not so fast. The land, he said, could fetch as much as $400,000.

"The idea is not to impoverish the guy; it's to get a fund to do the work," McArdle said. "He is struggling to maintain his business."

The two sides are slated to plead their cases to Agnes on Monday.

As the three-decade standoff drags on, tires, trucks, metal, and assorted machinery have re-emerged and multiplied on Allen's Southern Avenue property.

"He has just as much stuff as he had two or three years ago," said Lynne Marchetti, who chairs the Essex Board of Health. "It never ends."

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.