HEALTH;

Connecticut laws/regulations;

You asked if any state law or regulation addresses homeowner’s accumulation of items in and about his property, and any recourse a neighbor may have.

State law requires local health directors to examine all nuisances and sources of filth injurious to the public health and have the nuisance abated and filth removed that may endanger the inhabitants’ health. Any property owner or occupant maintaining it in violation of the state Public Health Code is deemed, under the law, to be maintaining a nuisance or source of filth injurious to the public health (CGS § 19a-206). Local health directors, their authorized agents, or authorized sanitarians can enter places within their jurisdictions where there is just cause to suspect a nuisance or filth source exists.

The state Public Health Code states that “the owner of premises upon which persons reside… shall keep such premises free from accumulation of garbage, rubbish, rags, tin cans, paper, empty barrels, boxes or any material which, because of its character, condition or improper storage, may invite the breeding or collection of flies, mosquitoes, or rodents, or which may in any other prejudice the public health” (Public Health Code, § 19-13-B21). Buildings or any part of them which are in a dilapidated or filthy condition that may endanger the life or health of persons living in the vicinity are a public nuisance under the Public Health Code. Also, the code declares that “the discharge or exposure of sewage, garbage, or any other organic filth into or on any public place in such a way that transmission of infective material may result thereby” is a public nuisance (Code, § 19-13-B1(d),(i)). Complaints about such conditions should be made to the local health department.

Any local health director, upon being informed or knowing of the existence of a nuisance or any pollution occurring within his jurisdiction, must, within a reasonable time, investigate the nuisance. If he finds that one exists, he must issue a written order to abate it (Code, § 19-13-B2(a)). The order must specify the nature of the nuisance or pollution and state the time by which it must be abated or discontinued (Code, § 19-13-B2(b)).

JK: ro