Harper Valley residents urge county action on debris along Old Kirtland Highway
Harper Valley Estates residents told county commissioners wrecked cars and debris on Old Kirtland Highway have turned parts of their neighborhood into “a landfill.”
Wrecked cars, tires, debris and illegal dumping line County Road 6100, the Old Kirtland Highway, in Kirtland, and in May 2026 three Harper Valley Estates residents pressed the San Juan County Commission to intervene. They said the conditions have turned parts of the neighborhood into “a landfill” and are now drawing in outside dumpers.
Ross Trujillo told commissioners the problem came up at a recent homeowners meeting and said a big flood two years earlier washed a lot of material away that has never been cleaned up. He asked commissioners to drive down CR 6100 and take a look, and he specifically asked whether code compliance could be sent to the area.
Jason Wood said he was speaking for a few hundred residents. He described an attempt to build a barrier by stacking tires to block the debris, but said the wall only reached about 3 feet high before collapsing. Wood said the situation was described at the last HOA meeting as like driving through a landfill, even though residents also described Harper Valley Estates as a beautiful, tight-knit community.
Residents can submit violation complaints through the county’s code-compliance page, which lists ordinances covering disposal of refuse, flood damage prevention, junkyards and recycling centers, junked vehicles and junked mobile homes, and trash and refuse disposal.
San Juan County no longer provides roll-off dumpsters, but it does offer a Voluntary Property Clean-up program and a Hardship Relief Assistance program for qualifying property owners. Under those programs, San Juan County Public Works removes junk mobile homes, trash and debris. Cleanup assistance requires titles for items to be removed and income verification, and the voluntary program sets a household income limit of $30,120, with additional allowance for each extra family member. The county’s estimated escrow amounts for cleanup projects range from $900 for smaller jobs to $2,700 for larger ones.
The Clean-Up San Juan app is being redesigned, and while that happens residents can use a form to report illegal trash dump sites by uploading coordinates and photos. Dumping trash on public lands is illegal and subject to a $1,000 fine under county code, and the Solid Waste Department operates 12 trash transfer stations across the county, plus the county landfill, for low-cost disposal.
The original Clean Up San Juan app was created in response to widespread illegal dumping, and a San Juan County and Esri case study puts the cleanup it helped lead to at more than 127,000 pounds of trash. The county did not immediately respond to questions about what action, if any, it plans to take on the Harper Valley complaints.
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