Pittsfield woman fined $13,000 for illegal junkyard

PITTSFIELD – When a local woman failed to comply with a court order that mandated she clean up an illegal junkyard on Route 2, a Skowhegan District Court judge on Monday ordered her to pay a $13,000 fine – $100 a day for the 130 days she was in violation.

Patricia Woodard of Lower Detroit Avenue originally was warned about the unpermitted junkyard, which contained dozens of junked vehicles and was not fenced, in May 2002. She had two years and five months in which to remediate the violation and she did not.

After a series of court delays, Woodard admitted the land use violation in November 2003. According to his handwritten notes in the court file, Judge Charles Laverdiere was ready in May 2004 to assess a $500 fine if the property was cleaned up by September.

At a hearing on Monday, Laverdiere determined that substantial progress had not been made toward the cleanup and ordered Woodard to pay $100 a month toward the fine total of $14,825, which included state fees.

Woodard and her husband, Darryl Woodard, have a lengthy history of land use and environmental violations.

Court action against Darryl Woodard is pending at Skowhegan District Court involving charges that last year he towed more than 50 junked cars and more than 150 tires to property in Hartland owned by Newell Snowman of Clinton and dumped them in and around a pond.

Snowman never gave Woodard permission to use the land and discovered the unpermitted junkyard only when he was cited by Hartland’s code enforcement officer. Snowman said Tuesday that two of the cars and all the tires remain on the property.

According to court records, Woodard has been charged with property damage and criminal trespass and failed to appear at a hearing scheduled this summer. An arrest warrant was issued by the court, and Woodard turned himself in. He was released on bail pending a court hearing on the Hartland land-use violation, set for Nov. 3.

Woodard is a familiar name in Dexter, where the town paid $10,000 of the estimated $100,000 it cost to clean up thousands of tires left behind by Darryl Woodard when he sold a former junkyard there. When Woodard failed to pay his property taxes, the town foreclosed on his property in 1995.

In 1998, the Department of Environmental Protection stepped in and ordered the new owners to clean up the site. The owners approached the town about financial help in the effort, and eventually, through a Maine DEP program, the town paid $10,000 of the $100,000 cleanup costs.

William Murphy, who is also Dexter’s code enforcement officer, said recently that Dexter “has never seen a dime” from Woodard for cleanup costs.