Whee, neighbors are dumping raw sewage in their back yard... (roof, pipe)
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I was wondering why the OP had to mention the above along with the following :
"kids have shot vehicles, vehicle windows, house windows, etc.. ~ frequent bass music annoyances between 10pm and 4am, etc."
What does any of this have to do with the current situation of raw sewage seeping into their yard ?
Shows they won't be good neighbors and work to get this problem fixed. This is such a big issue, that if they chose to get it fixed they could, and the landlord would have to suck it up.
Well I'm certainly glad things are finally moving for you. But I would try to see how it is resolved before listing your home, if little changes other than the standing sewage you won't be able to sell that house.
There are a few more things you can do to defend yourself and your property. One is bring a small claims action against the landlord for the max allowed by your area based on the landlord allowing both these people who are obviously a danger to you to live there AND for allowing the deplorable conditions to exist thereby lowering the value of your property and quality of life as in a public nuisance. This has been done successfully in many places around the country to combat drug houses/gang houses.
Second, having lived in GA I've had experience with dragging the Feds in on things. Is there a creek,river or wetlands nearby? If so place a call to the Army Corp of Engineers and the EPA as they control all waterways and would not be happy about the pollution.
Our neighborhood did just that when developers were digging near some "wetlands" to build an apartment complex.
Third, in most places in this country you can speak with attorneys for a one time free consultation. Ask the attorney if you can go after the landlords insurance company to recover the costs to remediate your property as it's now a health hazard.
Forth, push the media HARD to come out and see this. Find out who the newsroom manager is and take some narrated video and send it to them but be professional, leave out all conjecture,insults and personal thoughts of the people involved, JUST the facts and the lack of help from any enforcement agency. You may have to take a day off work and physically go to each news station/paper to explain your situation. I've got a feeling if you calmly go to each one they'll see you're serious enough to spend your day trying to get help and run with it.
Well, another LONG day on the phone but we have movement. As of right now the water is off and the property is vacant. That is easily 90% of what we wanted, the situation to be halted.
Getting here though... good grief. I started this morning with a call to the city code enforcement/public health guy who brushed me off. I then called the county septic code enforcer (who started this as a favor for my father-in-law) and asked if he would be willing to make one last call on our behalf to try and make the city guy, who hadn't even bothered to SEE the cesspool yet, come by and look. He then offered my a number (and strategy) for calling the state public health and complaining about the lack of response from the city official. I did this and started a complaint and had a noon appointment with them (they were also among the first department I'd called back on Saturday, but I see now that they enforce city and county inaction). Meanwhile, my wife called child and family services to report the conditions. We then started in on calling lawyers (today was court day though, I was only getting receptionists), news outlets and the city manager and mayor (not in the order mind you). I've spoken with a couple lawyers now but have only gotten simple advice for things I had already done, I have an appointment with one news reporter tomorrow and when the city manager finally called my wife back he provided more information than any other single entity. Mind you he's now committed the mortal sin of telling us he was going to call and then not calling.
If you're reading this, please understand that the only value any person has is their word. When you don't do as you say, you've basically called into question Everything else about yourself. How am I to believe Anything you say if you've proven you won't even do something simple like call when you say you will.
Anyway, as of 11am they had found the owner and scheduled an appointment with him, a licensed plumber and 3 or 4 city officials at 2:30pm. The owner later changed that to 4pm, and then 10am tomorrow.... At noon I spoke with the State agency about the issue and within minutes of her leaving we fielded a few calls from the city to confirm the meeting with the owner. Around 2pm, Family Services called back to verify some info and handed it back to the county to put things in motion. and finally, at 4:40pm the city and county code enforcers (the 2 polar opposites, one who's been helping the most and the one who's done the least) showed up at my door to fill me in on the meeting with the Plumber (but not the owner)...
That's when I learned the water was off, they have to replace the entire sewer line from the house to the street (this may bite me in the butt as the line apparently runs along my property line where I have a well established tree screen for noise and privacy). The renters have been moved out until the work is done. There's still drainage (apparently it's been going on for so long that the crawl space showed "high tide" marks well above a foot up), but it's mitigated as much as is reasonably possible.
This is the first part of what we wanted though, to keep things from getting worse. Why it took 4 days to make it happen is beyond my comprehension. Why it was treated like a non-issue (seriously, they sent 2 cops to my house when I re-roofed because we didn't have a permit..... they don't even HAVE a permit for roofing in this city, and yes this is the same guy who's done nothing to help) simply boggles me. I'm still going to push for bio-hazard cleanup, but that should be easier with the momentum that's been gathered at this point... some of our calls haven't even born fruit yet.
I'm in no way satisfied, I'm still very much livid that this was allowed to go on for so long. Looking forward to laying out the story to the news reporter tomorrow. Between my wife and I, we have over 6 pages of typed notes that detail calls made, time, date, people spoken with, what was said, etc... I'm hoping they opt to go "interview" the different city people to get their side of the story too, I'll just be tickled to see them pull the "not my jurisdiction" and "we weren't informed" BS to someone who has a full account of the issue from the word Go. I just want them to squirm. No, that's not true, I want them to LEARN and make changes so no one else has to go through this (or something similar) again.
Well, another LONG day on the phone but we have movement. As of right now the water is off and the property is vacant. That is easily 90% of what we wanted, the situation to be halted.
Getting here though... good grief. I started this morning with a call to the city code enforcement/public health guy who brushed me off. I then called the county septic code enforcer (who started this as a favor for my father-in-law) and asked if he would be willing to make one last call on our behalf to try and make the city guy, who hadn't even bothered to SEE the cesspool yet, come by and look. He then offered my a number (and strategy) for calling the state public health and complaining about the lack of response from the city official. I did this and started a complaint and had a noon appointment with them (they were also among the first department I'd called back on Saturday, but I see now that they enforce city and county inaction). Meanwhile, my wife called child and family services to report the conditions. We then started in on calling lawyers (today was court day though, I was only getting receptionists), news outlets and the city manager and mayor (not in the order mind you). I've spoken with a couple lawyers now but have only gotten simple advice for things I had already done, I have an appointment with one news reporter tomorrow and when the city manager finally called my wife back he provided more information than any other single entity. Mind you he's now committed the mortal sin of telling us he was going to call and then not calling.
If you're reading this, please understand that the only value any person has is their word. When you don't do as you say, you've basically called into question Everything else about yourself. How am I to believe Anything you say if you've proven you won't even do something simple like call when you say you will.
Anyway, as of 11am they had found the owner and scheduled an appointment with him, a licensed plumber and 3 or 4 city officials at 2:30pm. The owner later changed that to 4pm, and then 10am tomorrow.... At noon I spoke with the State agency about the issue and within minutes of her leaving we fielded a few calls from the city to confirm the meeting with the owner. Around 2pm, Family Services called back to verify some info and handed it back to the county to put things in motion. and finally, at 4:40pm the city and county code enforcers (the 2 polar opposites, one who's been helping the most and the one who's done the least) showed up at my door to fill me in on the meeting with the Plumber (but not the owner)...
That's when I learned the water was off, they have to replace the entire sewer line from the house to the street (this may bite me in the butt as the line apparently runs along my property line where I have a well established tree screen for noise and privacy). The renters have been moved out until the work is done. There's still drainage (apparently it's been going on for so long that the crawl space showed "high tide" marks well above a foot up), but it's mitigated as much as is reasonably possible.
This is the first part of what we wanted though, to keep things from getting worse. Why it took 4 days to make it happen is beyond my comprehension. Why it was treated like a non-issue (seriously, they sent 2 cops to my house when I re-roofed because we didn't have a permit..... they don't even HAVE a permit for roofing in this city, and yes this is the same guy who's done nothing to help) simply boggles me. I'm still going to push for bio-hazard cleanup, but that should be easier with the momentum that's been gathered at this point... some of our calls haven't even born fruit yet.
I'm in no way satisfied, I'm still very much livid that this was allowed to go on for so long. Looking forward to laying out the story to the news reporter tomorrow. Between my wife and I, we have over 6 pages of typed notes that detail calls made, time, date, people spoken with, what was said, etc... I'm hoping they opt to go "interview" the different city people to get their side of the story too, I'll just be tickled to see them pull the "not my jurisdiction" and "we weren't informed" BS to someone who has a full account of the issue from the word Go. I just want them to squirm. No, that's not true, I want them to LEARN and make changes so no one else has to go through this (or something similar) again.
Just be VERY careful about what you say about your property as you may have to declare this when you go to sell. Don't shoot yourself in the foot when taking shots at them
Just be VERY careful about what you say about your property as you may have to declare this when you go to sell. Don't shoot yourself in the foot when taking shots at them
As long as it's fully remediated it shouldn't be an issue.
Well I'm certainly glad to see things are progressing and yes I would be equally pissed off as you are I was disappointed to learn that the tenants, who are shooting out car windows, will be returning. As I said you are going to have a huge problem selling that house with those tenants next door. Do you have any way of knowing if they had complained to the owner of the house?
This is the offending yard and sewage pool. If this isn't "dumping", willfully using a broken system in such volume that this occurs, I'm not sure what else to call it....
This is the our other neighbors yard (these 2 are on the end of the block, my property boarders them both):
And this is the Front yard of my house (the back yard has no pooling, it's just sopping wet/soggy over a 40x80' area):
And they're using enough water that it's flowing into the street, flushing all that body waste along about 150' of my yard:
How would YOU like to be living next to this? No, think about it. You open the door and are greeted with the stench of a pit-toilet. Walking into either the front or back yard, your shoes "squish" through the fully saturated ground. There's most likely fecal matter stuck to your shoes now, and your kids shoes ~ hope they don't trip and fall! Opps, the dog is rolling around in it and then run over and jump on you/rub against your legs. And the smell... my God the smell, and it's still cold outside. Just wait a week till the temps start to approach and breach 80 degree. Nevermind the rain that's expected and bound to flush even more of this fecal mater through 2 other yards and into the street.
Just think about this, really get a good visual. Now, imagine that the town/city says "Not our problem". The states says "we have no authority". The home owner says, well nothing because they never return a call.
Oh yeah, there's a church and frequently used playground directly opposite from where this is draining into the street. How would you feel about dropping your kids off to play with this in the street?
Am I wrong to be irate over this situation? If yes, then you're willing to have the same happen to you without complaint?
Really I'm amazed your county health department not all over this! They go rogue here is you leave untreated pool water sitting, due to health issues! Raw sewage? Why worst in my book.. Really call your news station, get a crew out, it's amazing how they can get these lazy butt voted into office to do their jobs, so not to look bad to the citizens.... Works great here!
I agree - get in contact with news station. They will be on it in a flash I would think.
Really! They do it here, it's amazing just how fast these folks voted into office get it done!
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Really I'm amazed your county health department not all over this! They go rogue here is you leave untreated pool water sitting, due to health issues! Raw sewage? Why worst in my book.. Really call your news station, get a crew out, it's amazing how they can get these lazy butt voted into office to do their jobs, so not to look bad to the citizens.... 
Works great here!
