The Iowa Environmental Protection Commission is sending the case of a Van Buren County garbage hauler to the Attorney General for potential legal action.
DNR attorney Noah Poppelreiter says Troy Sedore has been illegally operating a garbage transfer station on a property off Highway 18 in near Stockton. He says officials at DNR Field Office 6 worked extensively through 2023 and 2024 to bring the facility back into compliance. “We weren’t seeing progress on that. So towards the end of 2024, we began the formal referral process to the legal program,” he says.
Poppelreiter says a fire destroyed the building at the location in January of 2025 and they investigated the site. “What we determined was that this facility had truly degraded beyond a normal business practice. You can see that we have an open burn pit on the left there, as well as just solid waste being strewn all over the place,” Poppelreiter says.
Sedore had a license to operate a transfer station at the site in 2014, but that was revoked for lack of compliance in 2015. Poppelreiter says the evidence at the site shows garbage is being dumped there to be hauled away later. “This is not a scrapyard. It is not a legal transfer station. It is a dump. It is an illegal use of this facility to transfer waste for sure. It’s as he is, Mr. Sedore is stockpiling tires illegally at this place,” he says. He says there is a risk anytime it rains, that contamination will run off the property.
Poppelreiter told the Commission members the next step is to let the Attorney General prosecute the case. “I’ve shown you the facts of the facility. From our perspective, they’re quite egregious. But the number one fact is that Field Office 6 tried. They have tried to get this business working in a way that with the compliance of Iowa law, we have tried to get this facility operating in a way that’s the right way to handle the mess. And Mr. Sedore has not complied with those orders,” he says.
Neither Sedore or his attorney were at the meeting, and Poppelreiter says they were not required to be there.