Man accused of illegal burning by DNR has previously run afoul of Floyd County authorities

By Jared Strong, Iowa Capital Dispatch

A northern Iowa man who has been repeatedly warned for decades by state conservation officers not to burn various types of waste was recently fined $2,500, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Duane Alan Tesch, 73, of Carpenter, owns property in several cities that have been the subject of nuisance complaints in recent years, court records show.

Last year Floyd County hired a company to clean up property Tesch owns at 1539 Rock Grove Lane near Nora Springs, after he was ordered to clean it up and failed to do so.

Tesch had ignored an order to abate a nuisance that was issued by the county in November 2022, and after neighbors again complained to the Board of Supervisors in February 2023, the Floyd County Attorney’s Office had file a notice of municipal infraction against Tesch in District Court.

At a non-jury trial on May 8, 2023, Magistrate Katherine Evans had ordered Tesch to either clean up the property by May 23 or else the county had authority to clean it up and assess the cost to Tesch. She also assessed a civil penalty of $315 plus court costs.

When the property was not cleaned up by the deadline, the county hired Zimmermans Digging and Demo of Ionia to remove abandoned vehicles, brush and weeds, appliances, tires, trash and other materials from the property.

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors in July last year assessed a cost of $8,500 against Tesch as the price the county paid to have his property cleaned up.

Recently, neighbors of the Tesch’s Nora Springs property have complained that it is once again filled with items, and Floyd County has started action again.

In July 2023, Tesch admitted to burning a fiberglass water tank as part of his effort to tidy his site in Grafton, the DNR said in a recent order. The department further alleged that he burned a mattress, box spring, speaker, wheeled cart and other items.

“Mr. Tesch stated that he is under a lot of pressure from the city of Grafton to clean up the property, and he was just trying to get it done,” the order said.

The DNR fined him for the incident — which was reported by neighbors — and noted the numerous admonitions he has received from the department for similar situations dating back nearly 28 years.

“Mr. Tesch has a long history of illegal open burning and illegal open dumping,” the order said.

He was the subject of DNR investigations in 1996, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2016, 2017 and 2018 for burning construction waste, appliances, furniture, household waste, tires, plastic and other items.

Tesch allegedly boasted to a neighbor in one of those complaints that “maybe someday he will just light the plastic pile and burn it as the DNR would have forgotten it by now,” the order said.

Some of those investigations coincide with other times that city and county governments sought to penalize him for his unsightly properties. Mitchell County accused him in 2016 of establishing a junk yard on a Toeterville property that did not have proper zoning for such a facility. A judge dismissed the county’s request for an injunction by finding that the county had used the wrong court procedure to enforce its ordinance, but the judge verified that the site was “junky.”

Tesch was also cited for nuisance property in Carpenter in 2019 in addition to the Nora Springs property action last year, court records show.

— Bob Steenson of the Charles City Press contributed to this report.

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