Please avoid the western Loxahatchee area near 59th & 200th. Once the signs are up, strict enforcement will be in place. We will also have a detail watching the signs to insure they are not removed. The residents will also be notiying us of any activity. Please get the word out, so the sport can avoid any further negative publicity.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcwest/content/local_news/epaper/2006/02/01/w1B_noise_0201.htmlRural residents complain of noise from unattended land
By Mitra Malek
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
LOXAHATCHEE — A few tacked-up signs might have stopped months of stress, sleepless nights and vandalism in a Loxahatchee neighborhood.
Every weekend, rowdy trespassers descend on dozens of undeveloped acres at 59th Lane and 200 Trail North, setting fire to the trees they've felled after tearing across the land with noisy all-terrain vehicles. Residents say the revelers shoot off guns and come onto their property long enough to leave behind beer bottles and steal parts off cars.
Neighbors say they've called authorities, but Palm Beach County sheriff's deputies have done little because they need permission to enter private property.
"It's like we're forgotten out here," said Patti Albritton, whose property backs up to the land. That worries her. Last month, after enduring hours of noise, she awoke to find her thoroughbreds loose. Someone had opened their stall, and two Budweiser bottles were inside. She moved the horses to a friend's property — in Alabama.
Dalco Properties, which owns part of the land, has not put up "no trespassing" signs from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, although the Boca Raton company filed a trespass affidavit several months ago. The affidavit allows law enforcement to make arrests, but the signs must be up, sheriff's Lt. David Kronsperger said.
Dalco's agent, Ledger Kellier, said he thought everything was done when he sent in the authorization.
The lapse in communication has led to mild attempts to oust the crowds.
"We warn them; they leave; then the next weekend, other groups come up," Kronsperger said. "We're trying to get results."
Residents aren't so sure. They say the deputies have stopped coming out and that dispatchers aren't happy to hear from them.
Resident thingy Macdonald has gone on the property several times to address the trespassers himself. "They listen," he said. "But they come back."
Residents say the motocross crowd has been using the property for years. It started small, when the land was thick with trees. Now the loud trucks come by the dozen. "It's all day, all night," Albritton said. "I might as well live in a zero-lot-line community, a college dorm."
They speculate that development pushed the four-wheeler crowd from where they rode before. Eventually that can happen here, too. Kellier said Dalco bought the land to build on it. A second property owner, Ramon Vilarino, owns adjacent land that the trespassers ride on as well. Vilarino could not be reached for comment.
The residents said they'll wait a little longer for the signs to go up and the activity to die down.
Otherwise they have a proposal for the landowners: Let residents lease the land for $1 a year, raise a cow on it and erect a fence.
"We'd have to pay for it ourselves," Albritton said. "But that's one way to do it."
