MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — People living near Middletown's old Paperboard site are getting fed up with the mountain of rubble towering over their homes more than a year after the building was ground into gravel and piled near Verity Parkway and 5th Street.
Marva Gaston said she moved back to her hometown after retiring from a 36-year-long career in the Air Force and wondered if the pile across the street from her home would ever be taken care of.
"Once they piled up the dirt, it's like, OK, what's next? What's next? And there never was a next," Gaston said.
The pile is only a few hundred feet from her front porch, and she said dust from it regularly flies onto her home, cars and even herself.
Gaston said the thought of breathing in particles from a massive pile of industrial remains has her concerned for her health.
"We don't know what's in the dirt," she said. "We don't know what's in the pile."
Gaston took her concerns to the Middletown City Council during its last two meetings, demanding that something be done about the mountain near her home.
At the meeting on Tuesday, the veteran reiterated concerns she thought went unanswered at the council's meeting two weeks earlier.
Immediately after her public comment, Mayor Elizabeth Slamka called on a representative of the company cleaning up the property, Tom Mignery, to address her health concerns.
WATCH: Gaston confronts Middletown Council over the towering rubble pile
Mignery told the council roughly a dozen samples from the rubble pile had come back to meet commercial or industrial-rated property standards set by the state.
"It was properly abated of all asbestos before demolition," he said.
Mignery said the soil on the property will still need remediation, but the future of the gravel pile is the city's responsibility, as it could be used to grade the property when properly cleaned, in industrial use elsewhere, or sold for a profit.
Slamka called for City Manager Ashley Combs to develop a timeline for the rubble pile to be addressed.
Councilman Paul Lolli suggested the pile be leveled off to mitigate dust issues as a plan for addressing it is developed.
Vice-Mayor Steve West called for Gaston's dust issues to be addressed in the near future.
"I think that's something we need to look at right away," he said. "I mean, if that's something we can figure out pretty quickly on this. I mean, in this picture, it looks like she lives in Colorado."
We asked Gaston if the council member's response to her most recent visit gave her hope for a quick resolution.
"I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, but, at the same time, I'm not going to be satisfied until something happens," she said. "When it's gone, that's when I'll be happy."
We reached out to city administration on Wednesday with a list of questions, including a timeline for addressing the rubble pile, options to mitigate dust and potential uses for the property once clean-up is complete.
A spokesperson for the city told us Thursday he had forwarded the questions to the Community and Economic Development Department and the Public Works Department, but hadn't heard back.
