A North Salem homeowner who sued his neighbors last year for allegedly dumping contaminated soil on his property now says the town is allowing the neighbors to store contaminated soil.
Thomas DiMaio accused the Town of North Salem of failing to perform its duties, in a petition filed on Aug. 29 in Westchester Supreme Court, by enacting an order on Aug. 6 that allows Julia K. Lorusso and Frank Castelli to keep contaminated soil on their property.
The Aug. 6 order reversed a 2022 order that required the soil to be removed and tested, the petition states, “effectively permitting contamination risks to persist.”
North Salem Supervisor Warren J. Lucas declined to discuss the allegations.
DiMaio bought his 1.1-acre plot on Whittier Hills Road in 2017. Lorusso and Castelli, a landscape contractor, moved in next door in 2020.
DiMaio agreed in 2021 to let Castelli dump 35 truck loads of dirt to fill in and level his backyard, according to court records. In 2022, North Salem stopped the work and issued an order for the dirt to be tested.
Last year, DiMaio sued his neighbors for $1 million, claiming that the fill dirt was contaminated.
Lorusso and Castelli filed counter-claims, stating that DiMaio regularly trespasses on their property, harasses  them, and abuses governmental processes, allegedly filing 11 spurious criminal complaints against them, for example, and complaining about them to North Salem officials 178 times.
This past June, a judge appointed a mediator to hear their dispute. Mediation did not work, and the judge ordered them to attend a settlement conference on Sept. 30.
Now DiMaio claims that North Salem officials abandoned the 2022 orders that required soil testing. Instead, he claims, 100 cubic yards of fill dirt was tested but not certified, and 640 cubic yards of fill dirt has not been tested.
He also alleges that the town ignored zoning violations that have led to erosion and damaged trees and have diminished the value of his property.
He is asking the court to annul the August 2025 order that allegedly permits contaminated soil to remain in place on his neighbor’s property. He wants the court to order testing of 640 cubic yards of fill dirt, and to compel North Salem to convene an ethics committee meeting to hear his complaints about alleged bias, favoritism and misconduct.
DiMaio is representing himself without an attorney.
