Neighbors cheer after demolition of trailer

Published 10:19 am Monday, July 18, 2011

BURLINGTON — The traditional July 4 festivities were long gone when those living in a Burlington neighborhood had a second reason to celebrate — their independence from an eyesore that had kept their neighborhood captive for more than two years.

On Tuesday a crew from Rolo Excavating from Proctorville pulled into Howard Lane to start tearing down an abandoned trailer neighbors had fought hard to have pulled down.

“You can’t even tell it was there,” Harriette Ramsey of adjacent Charlotte Lane said. “It is wonderful. Piece by piece it was torn down. It had been a long time coming. It is just as clear as a bell. They cleared everything away. It is just beautiful.”

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Ramsey led the fight to get the trailer removed starting with contacting the county health department and the Fayette Township Trustees to taking the fight to the Ohio EPA.

One of the neighbors’ biggest concerns was that the trailer was never attached to a sewer system when it was occupied by renters, with raw sewage flowing onto the lot, she said.

Most neighbors had to call in exterminators for roach problems, Ramsey said.

In January the Lawrence County Commissioners approved a demolition agreement to tear down the trailer, with funds from a block grant through the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action Organization.

The demolition took most of the day, Ramsey said, with neighbors keeping tabs on the work.

“It must have been four or five loads,” she said. “Everybody was calling everybody else. Everybody is just happy to see it down and see our property back to the way it used to be, with pride in our neighborhood. We don’t have to look at that eyesore.”