CARTHAGE – To outsiders, Carthage is a 20,000-acre town of 520 people, with at least 75 percent of it in tree growth. Situated between Dixfield and Weld, it’s bisected by Route 142.
Simmering below its surface is a neighborhood feud that Head Selectmen Steve Brown says he’s trying to extinguish before innocent people get hurt.
Brown is caught in the middle of an environmental-impact conflict between property owners Gordon Fitzherbert and Patrick Michael Kenney, and Hurchial Noyes.
It revolves around a Route 142 junkyard, which Fitzherbert and Kenney say has made them unable to sell their homes.
Kenney bought his house from Noyes six years ago. Fitzherbert bought his lot and three properties from a different seller eight years ago, but that land used to belong to Noyes, also.
Fitzherbert, Kenney and Noyes all say they’re not feuding. But confrontations between Fitzherbert and Noyes have boiled over into public shouting matches.
Last week, Noyes had Franklin County Deputy Heidi Gould serve Fitzherbert with a summons for criminal threatening, lodging a complaint alleging that Fitzherbert threatened him and his truck with a 4-foot-long metal pipe.
Fitzherbert, who lives on Webb River Acres Road, said Thursday that it wasn’t a pipe, but his cane, and, “I didn’t swing it at him.”
Honored in town report
Noyes, 76, has lived in Carthage his whole life and served on its municipal boards. The town dedicated its 1992 town report to him and his wife, Florence.
He said they never had any problems until Fitzherbert moved into the neighborhood.
“I’ve always tried to be reasonable. I don’t think I’ve done anything against him. I’ve even cleaned things out that he could see from his property,” Noyes said.
Fitzherbert lives behind and across the Webb River from Noyes’ son Charles’ automobile recycling shop, C.J.’s Autobody, next to Hurchial Noyes’ junkyard.
Fitzherbert said his main beef with Hurchial Noyes has always been about the river and concerns about scrap metal, tires, an old fuel tanker and junk cars behind the junkyard on the riverbank or in the flood plain.
“That’s all I ever wanted. I don’t care if he’s got a junkyard. It’s all been about getting tires and junk out of the river. All I ever want to do is live alone in peace, and I want a clean river,” Fitzherbert said.
Hurchial Noyes says the river is clean. Noyes said that in recent weeks he has removed much of the offending junk, including a 35-year-old camp and outhouse built by his father.
“I’ve got no bad feelings for Gordon, but I’d like for him to mind his own business. I think people should be able to do what they want with their own land, as long as it doesn’t pollute,” he said.
No junkyard ordinance
In a May 23 letter to Carthage selectmen, DEP environmental specialist James Crowley listed several problems with the junk and operations at Hurchial Noyes’ property along Webb River, and Crowley requested that the town board address the concerns.
Brown, the head selectman, said Carthage has no junkyard ordinances.
Kenney also wants the floodplain cleaned, but the junk problem, he says, involves more than just the Noyes’ junkyard.
“From bridge to bridge in Carthage (on Route 142), I’ve counted over 60 junk cars in 3.1 miles,” Kenney said recently. “It’s way out of hand.”
Both Kenney and Fitzherbert say that neither Brown or the town has helped them, so they complained to the state and Rep. Randy Hotham, R-Dixfield.
Hotham, who has met with both men, said Sunday evening that the burden to clean up the town rests with selectmen, who must enforce the state’s junkyard statutes, because Carthage has none.
“I hope the Board of Selectmen listen, and make sure that everything is up to snuff. We don’t pass these laws just so that they don’t get enforced,” Hotham said.
“Carthage is a great little town, and I hope that its town fathers and residents in the area come to some kind of solution,” he added.
Comments are no longer available on this story