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| Salvage owner at odds with KDOT |
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| News - Miami County News | |||
| Written by Robin Hixson | |||
| Wednesday, 11 February 2009 09:00 | |||
Truck Wholesale owner Danny Lambeth feels as if he’s been put between a rock and a hard place. Lambeth, who operates a heavy equipment salvage yard just outside of Wellsville, is at odds with the Kansas Department of Transportation. KDOT revoked his salvage certificate of compliance in 2001, saying he was not compliant with the Junkyard and Salvage Control Act. In late January, Gibson’s Recycling, under contract with KDOT to “abate” the area, began hauling Lambeth’s inventory off of the premises next to U.S. Interstate 35.In that contract, KDOT agreed to sell the removed materials to Gibson’s as scrap for $73 a ton. Lambeth said that includes about 50 classic and antique vehicles as well as a number of trucks and other equipment, some of which are worth $25,000 apiece. Although he had been told to remove the equipment from the salvage yard, he said doing so would have cost him his dealer’s license and, besides, he has no other property to which he could move them. “My license is current; I’m in good standing with the Department of Revenue. One of the requirements for a dealer’s license is that you keep your sales inventory at your location,” he said. Since 2001, Lambeth has appealed up to the Kansas Supreme Court without success. He said he has been in business there for 34 years and was always deemed in compliance until KDOT and Miami County decided to get rid of him. It all started, he said, because of complaints from people who thought he was breaking the law by having a salvage yard too close to the highway when, in fact, the Kansas Junkyard and Salvage Control Act exempts from that law any such businesses located in industrial zones. At first, he said, KDOT wrote letters to those who complained, explaining that he was in compliance. “Then, they decided they didn’t want to write those letters anymore,” he said. When he bought the property in 1975, Lambeth applied for and was granted industrial zoning. Later, he discovered that he had been given a conditional-use permit, for which he had not applied, but it listed no conditions. “Then the state got the county to pass a resolution putting six conditions on the conditional-use permit,” he said. “They’ve pushed the county in order to make a legal business illegal.” In those conditions, he was told to create a runoff plan to ensure oil would not run into a nearby creek. There had never been any polluting runoff, he said, citing numerous clean bills of environmental health from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Lambeth was also told to create a safe path for emergency vehicles. He had been parking some of his inventory vehicles along the road, which officials said didn’t allow for safe emergency vehicle access. “I built this road,” he said, pointing out that the state only bought the right of way when the interstate highway was built because the law prohibits cutting off the only access to a property. No actual road was built there until he did so when he bought it from the previous owner, who had plowed the right of way for crops and grazed cattle on it. Lambeth said nobody uses the road except for his business. As for requiring him to put up a screen, he said state statute exempts salvage yards in industrial zones from that regulation. Since Gibson’s began removing equipment, Lambeth said, they have punctured at least three oil pans, spilling oil onto the ground — something he said he has never done. Also, he said he believes the parts and equipment were not being sold for $73 a ton as scrap, as was specified in the contract, but for their actual worth, just as he would have sold them. “They’re stealing from me,” he said. On Monday, Lambeth said the abatement work has since been shut down, and equipment removed from the yard earlier has been returned without explanation. At this point, he said, he isn’t sure what is going on.
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