Warren Salter's yard had yielded more problems than dandelions. Just inches below the surface, he's dug up glass, spark plugs, even the hood to an old truck.
Salter bought his house in Havelock, N.C., in 2001, but by 2003 he realized that something was wrong.
"Everybody's yard is dropping," Salter told ABC News. "What used to be flat land for the kids to play football in is now big sunken areas."
"Trees I planted about five years ago, now you look at them and they're tilted down hill toward where everything is sinking," he said.
The reason, he said, is because the neighborhood was built on an old landfill, one that Salter said was last used in the 1940s and 1950s. The city of Havelock began building out in the 1960s and Salter's home was constructed in 1973.
"My neighbor knew of the dump before this area was built out. He actually remembers where an old school bus is buried," said Salter. That bus in now believed to be under someone's backyard.
Salter told ABC News that he only has to dig inches in his yard to find traces of the dump like steel, glass or the truck hood.
Salter put a call in to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 after he realized there was a problem, and they directed him to the North Carolina Division of Waste Management. He said the state conducted studies on the neighborhood around 2005. It was discovered during these inspections that some cavities, or land voids, are a mere two feet below the soil, believed to be caused by now decomposed garbage, he said.
"I get the feeling that it won't be long before I'm coming home, driving my truck up to my driveway and will sink right through," he said.
Neighbor Shannon Richards moved into her 1975 house in 2001 and learned about the landfill a year later.
"My problem is with my house settling. I have cracks in my drywall. I even have some doors that won't close anymore. A couple of years ago, I had a pipe that snapped. That was before we knew of the landfill...now I realize that was probably due to that," Richards said.
"My dog has pulled glass out of the backyard," she said.
Richards said the city of Havelock should be held somewhat responsible.
"[The city] issued the permits to the builders. We'd like for them to come in and properly clean it up. If they can't do that, we'd like for them to buy us out," she said.
Havelock city attorney Warden Smith told ABC News that a city meeting is scheduled for June 10, but Salter and his neighbors may find it a bit "anticlimactic."
"As a practical matter, the meeting on the 10th is simply for our office to report the board of commissioners our findings...for these citizens, it may be a fairly disappointing meeting," Smith said.
"My answer as the city attorney is that the city of Havelock has no liability at all," Smith said. "It wasn't done on their watch."
Smith explained that the landfill and the dumping predated the establishment of the city. He said, "Private property owners will have to deal with it themselves."
"I get the feeling that it won't be long before I'm coming home, driving my truck up to my driveway and will sink right through," he said.
In a University of Georgia press release, Donald Harn, Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Infectious Diseases said, “Prevalence of inflammation-based diseases is extremely low in countries where people are commonly infected with worms… But the minute you start deworming people, it doesn’t take too long for these autoimmune diseases to pop up”. The researchers hypothesized that this might be a result of sugar-based molecule called glycan, which is excreted by these parasitic worms. This molecule helps protect the worms from our body’s immune defenses which in turn, reduces the amount of inflammation present in the tissues that surround them. Apparently, this reduction in inflammation also helps the human host. Harn and his fellow researchers believe this may have implications for treating all sorts of metabolic disorders.
To think that all of this poured forth from a goofy, three-chord song—a mere 208 words, roughly half the length of this article—written about being lazy and getting drunk. But as Buffett’s Parrothead empire continues to spread, one can’t help but wonder whether a more lucrative song exists. “If there is anything on the same scale as a Margaritaville, it’s not a song—it’s a motion picture,” says Robert Brauneis, a professor of intellectual property at the George Washington University Law School and author of a research paper on Happy Birthday to You, which continues to generate upwards of $2 million a year. “When you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, you have to think in terms of Star Wars, Winnie the Pooh, or Transformers. That’s probably in the same order of magnitude.”
