Anchorage Daily News

It happens every two or three weeks. Bob Brackbill comes to work at Storite Storage off Dimond Boulevard, looks at the empty lot next door, and sees a steaming new pile of manure.

The stealth-of-night dumpings have been going on for about four months now. Tons of manure have accumulated, and a code enforcer with the city said the property owner -- who lives in Hawaii -- has been told it could cost as much as $6,000 to haul the stuff away.

The property owner is getting stuck with the bill, because no one knows the identity of the perpetrator.

Make that the poopetrator.

"It's the Great Manure Caper of 2007," said Ron Teekell, an owner of the storage company next door to the dumping ground.

The piles -- two of them, with clumps of hay poking out and lots of little horse turds scattered around the edges -- are behind the Dimond-Jewel Lake Center, a strip mall just north of the intersection of Dimond and Jewel Lake Road.

Fat truck-tire tracks lead from the road behind the mall to the growing piles on the unfenced lot.

Rick Novy, a code enforcement officer for the city, said he's been told there's 12 dump loads of poop. Pete Kinneen, who runs a compost facility near Point Woronzof, visited the lot and estimates there's a hundred tons.

Once Novy got wind of the illegal dumping, he e-mailed the lot's property manager in Hawaii. "He had no idea," Novy said.

But unless the owner can prove who landed him in this mess, he will get stuck with the bill for taking care of someone else's crap.

One contractor estimated it'll cost $6,000 for the owner to cover hauling and dumping fees, according to an e-mail Novy got from the property manager.

Linda McQueary, who takes care of 53 horses at the Diamond H Ranch in South Anchorage, said the lot owner might think about spreading the manure across the lot with a bulldozer.

"They could end up with some beautiful topsoil," she said. "They might as well turn it into something beautiful."

For now, though, it's a couple of unsightly piles.

Brackbill and Teekell, who have been watching the poop pile up since about August, figure the culprit is someone who wants to save money on dumping fees, which run $45 a ton at the city's landfill on Hiland Road and $25 a ton at Kinneen's compost facility.

The average horse produces 35 or 40 pounds of a manure a day, according to a variety of sources. So this is the work of a lot of animals.

"It's at least a 10-horse stable," guessed Brackbill, who said he used to clean stalls at a racetrack when he was a little boy.

The theory he likes best is that a barn is paying someone to haul and dump manure, but the person is pocketing the dumping fees and emptying his truck in vacant lots.

Two blocks east of the strip mall, at the intersection of Dimond and Blackberry, there's an empty lot with two smaller piles of manure, maybe three or four dump-loads' worth.

And last spring, an industrial area in Mountain View was the scene of two mysterious dumpings.

Teekell, who is perhaps guilty of watching a little too much "CSI," thinks it's time for some serious sleuthing.

"We can take moldings of the tire tracks," he said. "What do you think about DNA testing?"

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.