Woodridge, NY - Neighbors Feud Fuels Ill-Will

Woodridge, NY - When it rains in this neighborhood, brown-tinged water runs in sheets and pools on the lawns. When it doesn't rain, reddish-brown dust settles in the houses, fine and thick.

Vladimir Loos says "I have very bad breathing, just like I smoked 40 years," Loos says in a heavy Czech accent. "And I don't smoke."
Loos sleeps at night with a towel over his head. His doctor is sending him for an X-ray, to try to find out why there's a rasping noise in his chest. He and his wife vacuum every day, the machines sucking up reddish-brown silt so fine that it feels like talcum powder when you rub it between your fingers.

This water and this dust, Loos says, come from the Menorah Congregation bungalow colony, right behind his property and that of his neighbors. The trouble started in 2002, after colony owner Abraham Tabak bulldozed and put in a parking lot covered with a bed of red shale, just above his neighbors. Village officials say Menorah needed the lot because cars parked on the road.

In 2003, the village sent an engineer to check Menorah's lot. The engineer said Tabak should install proper drainage with proper trenching to correct the heavy runoff, build a solid wood stockade fence and either oil and chip the lot or spray it with water to keep down the dust.

Fallsburg code enforcer Allen Frishman said the trouble started when Loos planted small trees and positioned some large boulders in a line that encroached on Menorah's property. Then Tabak built the parking lot.

"We, as a community, are trying to find some way to try to bring some peace to the neighborhood," said Village Attorney Jeffrey Kaplan.

Loos and three neighbors are suing Tabak and the village and asking for damages and an order to correct the problems.