KNOX — Eleanor Barcomb was stunned on Monday morning, she said, when she saw a town truck dumping refuse on her mother’s property across the street from her own house.

“They didn’t think anybody was around to notice,” she said. “My car was in the garage and I’m very quiet … I happened to be looking out the window and I saw their dump truck and their machine, pushing it down into my mother’s ravine.”

What was being unloaded alongside Bell Road near Quay Road, Barcomb said, were pieces of willow and locust trees.

Barcomb asked, “Who authorized this?” and says she was told, “Well, it just seemed like a convenient spot.”

Barcomb then spoke with Jason Smith, Albany County’s highway foreman for the Knox subdivision.

The refuse was dumped partly on the right-of-way along Bell Road, a county route, Smith told the Enterprise on Monday afternoon, and partly on Barcomb’s private property.

“I definitely didn’t give anyone permission,” Smith said of the dumping.

Barcomb’s concerns were two-fold.

“They’re putting invasive species on my mom’s property that’s going to wipe out the woods,” she told The Enterprise on Monday morning.

Second, she worried, since the town truck had been used for transporting salt, that salt residue would find its way to the creek at the bottom of the ravine. Barcomb said the creek feeds into the Bozenkill. The Bozenkill, in turn, feeds the Watervliet Reservoir, which is Guilderland’s major source of drinking water.

Later in the day, Albany County Sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene, Barcomb said, and then a town crew reappeared on Monday afternoon, this time to remove the debris that had been dumped that morning.

“Albany County is not happy,” said Barcomb. “I’m not happy. My mother’s just found out about it. She’s not happy. And the DEC’s definitely not happy.”

After The Enterprise emailed the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to see if the agency had concerns about invasive species taking hold or about salt flowing to the Bozenkill, a DEC spokesman replied on Monday afternoon, “We received your inquiry regarding an alleged dumping incident in Knox. I need to check with staff/law enforcement to find out if this was even reported to DEC as this is the first I’m hearing about it.” 

Knox Highway Superintendent Matthew Schanz did not immediately return a call or an email from The Enterprise, posing a series of questions about why the material had been dumped on private property and in the county’s right-of-way or how much labor was involved in cleaning it up.