LYME — A years-long conflict between the town and a resident over an old family farm that a judge ruled is an illegal junkyard is headed for one last deadline. Jed Smith has until Tuesday to clear the Dorchester Road property himself. If he doesn’t, the town will send in a contractor– and bill him for it.
Smith says he can’t finish in time, and that the town is asking for too much.
“I’m never going to be able to meet the requirements; they’re not going to be satisfied with the progress,” Smith said in a phone interview.
On the 17-acre property that Smith owns with his mother, Martha Smith, he keeps an assortment of vehicles, machines, tools and spare parts he says are valuable and support his various trade jobs. Town officials, however, feel the property’s condition is a liability and an environmental threat.
Selectboard Chair David Kahn said the town has a responsibility to bring the property into compliance with a court order and with state law.
“And that’s all we’re trying to do,” Kahn said earlier this month.
The town and Smith don’t see eye to eye over what he should be allowed to keep, and haven’t for the past decade.
“The saga continues,” said Smith.
The Selectboard’s upcoming deadline gives Smith the option to clear the property himself before they send in reinforcements. But he feels it’s not enough time, and he’s not willing to part with everything they want him to.
An inventory from the town listed nearly 50 different types of items, from lawn mowers to refrigerators to bicycles to trucks. Kahn estimated there are 40 to 60 vehicles on the property “in various stages of sinking into the mud,” most of which did not appear operational.
In response to the inventory, Smith submitted a list of “personal property we will be keeping for our own use,” he wrote, that ran to roughly 30 vehicles, plus dozens of miscellaneous items.
New Hampshire law defines a junk yard as a place used for storing and keeping — or storing and selling, trading or otherwise transferring — old or scrap metal, batteries, rags, paper, trash, rubber debris and waste, or “junked, dismantled, or wrecked motor vehicles, or parts thereof.”
A property becomes a motor vehicle junk yard once it holds the equivalent of two or more vehicles that are no longer “intended or in condition for legal use according to their original purpose,” under RSA 236:112.
About 10 years ago, Grafton County Superior Court Judge Lawrence MacLeod directed Jed and Martha Smith to remove “all vehicles not registered and inspected, all tires, vehicle parts and other salvage, and all trash or refuse” from the Dorchester Road property and from a second, smaller property on Goose Pond Road.
The family, MacLeod wrote, was “continuing to maintain what amounts to illegal junk yards in violation of state law.”
“After that court order, the property actually got worse for many years,” Kahn said of the family farm.
When Judge Lawrence MacLeod found Smith to be in contempt of court, he granted the town permission to go in themselves and clean up, according to a Nov. 25, 2015 order.
Little changed until March 2024, when town meeting voters approved spending up to $150,000 on the removal. Smith and volunteers brought the Goose Pond Road property into compliance, but the Dorchester Road property has not yet followed. An attorney for the Smiths briefly halted the work that October with a temporary restraining order, which the two sides settled days later.
The Selectboard has since provided a Sept. 15 deadline for Smith to bring the property to compliance, or outline approximately six vehicles and a few other items he wants to keep. The rest may be subject to removal.
About $128,000 of the appropriation remained at the end of last year, and voters declined to add to it in March, rejecting a $100,000 request 64-86.
The town has a $135,000 contract with Orford-based Quintown Container Service to finish the job, based on documents shared by town administrator Dina Cutting.
Smith said he has made real progress on his own, hauling off scrap metal, old push mowers and a few cars and trucks.
“Public perception will change greatly if we get the whole front yard cleaned up,” Smith said.
He says removing the rest would be a significant financial loss, because he put money into the vehicles and other items, and the spare parts alone are worth thousands of dollars. He contends the town is violating his constitutional rights by taking his personal property without paying him for it, and he says the expectation that he repay the cleanup costs is unrealistic.
“We can’t repay that, we can’t afford that,” Smith said, adding that he fears the property will be seized over the debt.
Smith is expected to reimburse the town because he did not do the work himself by the deadline, and because the court order made the cleanup his family’s responsibility.
But Kahn said the town is not trying to take the family’s land away, but rather bring it to compliance after all these years.
“We really don’t want to hurt these people; we really don’t want to besmirch their reputation,” he said. “But there’s just no other way to do this.”
