Crews remove tons of junk

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. – An elderly man's property has become a local dump site for some people in northern Rowan County.

And on Thursday, crews from Charlotte volunteered their time and their trucks to remove several tons of garbage scattered along his land.

Crews say they loaded more than 22,000 pounds of rotting, smelly, disgusting junk into their trucks Thursday.

That's about 10 dump trucks filled with junk. As one group of trucks left for the local land fill, crews were busy loading another.

"My thinking is that if it got too bad, then the state or the county might make me clean it up because it's my property,” said Raymond Everhardt, who owns the property.

All of the garbage has been left on Everhardt's property. At 86 years old, the World War II veteran says doesn't have the strength to remove the trash himself, and can't afford to hire someone else to do it for him.

"We had seen stuff on the Internet, we had seen stuff on TV, but we had no idea how much was out here,” Jay Gurian said, with national junk removal company 1-800-Got-Junk.

Gurian’s company heard about Everhardt's situation and decided to help.

"It wound up being a whole lot more than we thought it was,” Gurian said.

Children's toys, car tires, mattresses, couches, even animal carcasses -- you name it, the crews found it dumped on Everhardt's property.

And neighbors say the worst part is that all this garbage was dumped not over several years, but in several months.

"The state has been out here, I'd say at least six months ago,” said Brent Polk, a neighbor.

Everhardt visits his property daily to try and deter the illegal dumping.

"Of course, they still come at night,” Everhardt said.

But at least there's some progress in getting this makeshift dump site cleaned up.

"I appreciate it, I thank them for it,” Everhardt said.