A waste-ridden site along Milton Street has become a nightmare for a handful of residents who live in the East End's warehouse district.
City Councilman Cubert Smith represents Ward 8, which includes a roughly 30,000-square-foot lot in an area zoned as a general commercial district - where industry and residences are meant to coexist.
About one-third of the lot is covered with towering piles of dirt, broken concrete, piping, bricks and other rubble.
Construction firm Mountain Haus Properties leases the land from Kanawha Roxalana Land Co., and contracts with West Virginia American Water to remove excavation materials from work sites and temporarily store them at the lot, which is surrounded by about 10 homes on Miller and Richards streets.
But several debris piles littering the site have simply accumulated to the point that Smith now refers to it as a "landfill." He encouraged fellow council members to go look at the site during council's meeting last week.
"It doesn't look like Fox Chase, or Quarry Creek, or Edgewood Drive," he said. "Nowhere [else] in the city would this be tolerated."
Multiple calls made to Mountain Haus were not returned last week.
Smith contends that the site violates one of its purposes in the zoning ordinance, which states general commercial districts must "regulate such commercial uses so as to minimize their impact on surrounding residential neighborhoods."
West Virginia American Water spokeswoman Laura Jordan confirmed that the company has contracted with Mountain Haus since 2013 for disposal of materials from "day to day work," such as water main and valve repairs.
"We looked at the cost, and having a contractor perform this kind of work for our crews frees them up to do the type of work [they're trained to do]," Jordan said.
Debby Smith has lived in the neighborhood most of her life and said most of her neighbors are elderly African-American homeowners.
She said the dump trucks drive down Milton Street to drop off materials at all hours, and the entrance gate is often left open.
Smith also expressed concerns that the blighted site has decreased the property value of the nearby homes, including her own on Miller Street.
Her complaints to the city haven't been fruitful.
"It's like no one cares ... what they don't understand is, we're seniors. We're homeowners," Smith said. "We have more or less had to live with it, because [there's] nothing else we could do about it."
City Planning Director Dan Vriendt said he's consulting with City Attorney Paul Ellis to determine what options the city has if Mountain Haus is found to be noncompliant with the zoning ordinance.
"This isn't something we've dealt with a lot before," he said.
Vriendt said Mountain Haus shouldn't be storing trash and materials at the site indefinitely.
"You're allowed to do open storage in a C-10 [district], but that doesn't mean you can leave trash all over the place," he said. "It shouldn't be used as a landfill."
Reach Elaina Sauber at elaina.sauber@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-3051 or follow @ElainaSauber on Twitter.