Why did we start this Pittston Township PA site?
First of all, our family has lived in Pittston Township in the SAME house for over 110 years. It was once a wonderful place to live. Things have changed.

In the spring of 2002 a Pittston Township official, whose salary is paid by taxpayers such as ourselves. decided to "allow" huge dump trucks laden with UNCOVERED dirt (this is illegal in Pennsylvania) to come to OUR property and dump dirt - tons and tons and tons of dirt. Mountains of dirt.

The dirt came from the huge slag heap up being cleared througout the Spring and Summer of 2002 at the Pittston Plaze. It came via al local trucking company and the smaller trucking companies who were subcontracted by this particular trucking company. The huge slag heap, several stories high, was being cleared and relocated to our backyard, and the backyards of our neighbors, to make way for (we found out later after the 21,0000 sq. foot structure was built) the new Verizon MSC (mobile switching center) which was later built on the cleared site by Deklewa corporation.

The thousands of truckloads traveled down the Pittston By-Pass, through our narrow residential street, and into our newly excavated and finished back yard. The trucks dumped their load on our property, had another vehicle pound it down, and then came back and back and back.

The huge trucks came, nonstop, all day long from morning until about 5PM, from April thru August 2002. Our daughter, who was seven at the time, was unable to play in her own backyard that entire summer. And every summer since - and you'd know why if you saw our backyard now.

When "they" were done dumping dirt, AND building a read-access road across our private property to the Pittston Township official's BROTHER's house (who is also on the payroll), our much loved basketball court and long-awaited yard began to crumble. By the next spring it was in cracked and crumbled tiers.
We had already struggled for nearly 18 YEARS - from 1984 until 2002 - to complete our yard for our children, born ten years apart. This meant buying dirt that our well-connected neighbors got for NOTHING, but which we were not "allowed" to have. Yet our back yard was the most precariously situated and we were the one of only two families with small children living in the home. We had been living on a precipice prior to this and wanted our children to have a safe place to play basketball and have friends over. The other neighbors houses were further from the cliff, and they had decent yards already. YET it was the neighbors who got the dirt in 1992, and the free excavation from state-funded projects to widen the highway in Pittston Township! This occured even though it was US who applied successfully with PennDot in the fall of 1991 to have the dirt delivered to our house.

YES, we went to the foreman on the highway project and asked WHY we were being denied. The man couldn't even look us in the eye...he just kept repeating, "I'm sorry."

The foreman must have finally put his foot down and confronted the Pittston Township official about this injustice, because during the LAST week of the several month project, we did start to get dirt. Funny thing, though. A sign appeared on a pole right across from our house (we saw the road crew member from Pittston Township putting it up). The sign prohibited trucks from coming down the street...

In 1995, the same thing happened. The highway project again went on, again state funded, and again we were denied dirt. This time we didn't know in advance that th edirt was coming. Again, it was a state-funded highway project. But when a neighbor came to our back door and told us that the trucks would be coming, but NOT to request dirt because they "knew someone" and were getting the dirt but would make sure WE got some as well, we believed them. And we waited. And waited. By now we had a 1 year old and really wanted our yard completed.

Needless to say, we were tricked and the dirt never came our way.

We then used our OWN funds and blood, sweat and tears to make our own haven for our children. It was beautiful for a few short years after completion between 1998 and 1999.

Then the trucks rolled on through our property in 2002...everyone on the street grumbled and wondered about this...but in the end everyone BUT US got their land excavated and any damage fixed.

In 2003, the damage became very apparent: our yard, after settling for a year, was cracked all over. Our basketball court was unusable, and looked like steps instead of a court.

We called the Township office and sent a letter to the municipal building in Pittston Township, but it wasn't acknowledged. Finally, in early 2004, we went to a meeting and complained.. The supervisors tried to act like they weren't aware of our calls and letter, or even of all the thousands of truck which had passed thru the area right by the borough building when all this was going on. They asked the employee who allowed trucks to ruin our property what had happened. To us it looked very rehearsed.

HOW COULD PITTSTON TOWNSHIP SUPERVISORS NOT KNOW THERE WAS A LITERAL MOUNTAIN OF DIRT BEING MOVED FROM PITTSTON PLAZA TO MARKET STREET? IT TOOK ABOUT 12 TRUCKS PER HOUR, 8 HOURS A DAY, 4 MONTHS for this to happen!

To keep us quiet, promises of repair were made by one specifio supervisor visit our yard and make things right. The rest agreed.

Since early 2004 we have been waiting for the promise made by the Pittston Township Supervisors - to fix our yard - to be made good. It has NOT happened.

Our neighbors know what we went through in this township, but why should they care? They were NOT treated as we were. Most of us have much in common: we are all the same religion (Catholic), the same age group (middle-aged with children and/or grandchildren), same modest, older homes. There is ONE difference.

This web site is our way of letting the story be told and hoping someday the PITTSTON TOWNSHIP SUPERVISORS will make good on their promose to FIX OUR YARD and correct a wrongdoing by one who had NO PERMISSION to trespass on AND destroy our property and who has gone UNPUNISHED for this deed.

Got something to say about Pittston Township or the Greater Pittston area?

Write to: WEBMASTER and we will forward your e-mail.

Don't be apathetic - or afraid - about what goes on in YOUR township, town, city or borough.

Remember, the next time something unjust happens, it just might be to YOU.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1945

As the famous Martin Luther King, Jr.* quote goes...
"An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere."
(*Some sources credit this quote to Samuel Johnson).