Video: Life living next door to Gershow Recycling

What’s it like to live next to Gershow Recycling?

Here’s a four-minute video shot Friday from the western boundary of Riverhaven mobile home park, which is directly adjacent to Gershow. The majority of the park’s residents are senior citizens.

Gershow has put up a chain-link fence with privacy slates to screen neighbors from looking at its operation and has stacked two metal shipping containers on top of one another in one area to deflect noise. Still, neighbors say they continue to hear noise and feel vibration from crushing cars and heavy equipment picking up and dropping scrap metal into containers.

The noise in this video is strictly from the scrap metal operation.

Don’t have four minutes to watch a video? Skip to the highlights at these specific times in the video:

• 00:50
• 01:20
• 02:10
• 02:20
• 03:20

Meanwhile, Riverhead Town last week filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court claiming Gershow Recycling is illegally operating its Hubbard Avenue facility.

However, the business will remain open while the case progresses through the legal system. State Supreme Court Justice Denise Molia rejected the town’s request for a temporary restraining order, which would have shut the business immediately pending the outcome of the case.

Town Attorney Bob Kozakiewicz said the judge rejected it on the grounds that the business had already been operating for more than a year before the complaints were brought.

Gershow’s attorney, Peter Danowski, said in a recent interview that Gershow has the same state Department of Environmental Conservation permit as the previous business, Gallo Used Auto Parts, had. Mr. Danowski said they have submitted a revised site plan that seeks to curb noise by stacking additional shipping containers along the property line.