Civic leader Claudia Sherrod sells property being used as an illegal dump, sues business partner.

Claudia Sherrod, head of the South Philadelphia H.O.M.E.S., Inc. civic group, is fighting a legal battle with an erstwhile business partner who she claims screwed her over in a real-estate transaction involving three trash-filled lots. The parcels are part of a massive and illegal garbage dump located adjacent to homes in Point Breeze.

Last September, Sherrod told City Paper that she was powerless to stop the dumping on six vacant lots that she and several other individuals owned on the 1100 block of South 24th Street. Strangely, city police and the Department of Licenses & Inspections say neither Sherrod, nor any of the other lot owners, ever filed a formal complaint with them.

Sherrod had bought one lot from the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation for $30,000 in 2006, presumably for redevelopment purposes. At some point over the last seven years, local contractor Donald Plummer illegally erected a chain-link fence and began piling his construction debris on all six vacant lots at the site. 

Several sources have claimed that Plummer once worked for Sherrod, something the civic leader vigorously denies. Vitaliy Polyachenko, a developer who recently purchased one of the trash-filled lots, told City Paper that he assumed Sherrod and Plummer had worked out some kind of arrangement to dump the trash.

The story was picked up by NBC 10 last year, and in a televised interview Sherrod portrayed herself as a victim, asserting that she didn’t have the know-how to stop the contractor. Her lawyer, Miles Dumack, says his client is simply “wary of litigation.”

In October, Sherrod’s lot and two adjacent parcels were bundled and sold to Polyachenko, garbage and all, for $120,000, according to city records. The other two properties had been owned by a man who died in 1987 and were willed to an elderly friend of Sherrod’s. That woman passed away recently without leaving a will, but her grandson, Kevin Mabine, asserts that he was the rightful owner of the lots. According to Dumack, Mabine cut a deal with Sherrod to sell all three properties as a package to Polyachenko.

Although it was unclear how the $120,000 was divvied up, Dumack suggests that the “litigation-wary” Sherrod got burned in the deal. He has since filed a legal claim on Sherrod’s behalf that says Mabine owes her an additional $30,000 to make up for taxes she apparently paid on Mabine’s lots over the years.

Sherrod did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Virtually everyone involved has pleaded ignorance as to how this enormous blight on the neighborhood could exist in the first place. A spokesperson for L&I says the department is now pursuing legal action against Plummer and at least one of the two remaining property owners, Michael Mazzola, who owns a nearby granite company. But that effort will take time. 

Meanwhile, the dump is bigger than ever, according to neighbor Erika Rose, who initially complained about the mess to City Paper last year. She says she had assurances from Councilman Kenyatta Johnson that the garbage would be removed, but nothing has changed, despite the media attention. 

“There has been activity [dumping] in there daily [since the first] story was printed and every day since,” she said.