WEST MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP, Pa. (WHTM) — This is not a story about good guys and bad guys.

There are bad guys involved, to be sure. But they’re not the ones on either side of this dispute.

The bad guys are whoever is dumping junk on the south side of Old Salem Road, which runs between West College Avenue and Hokes Mill Road/Route 182, on the edge of otherwise-well-manicured land known as Codorun Farms, owned by Mel Campbell.

Campbell says people have been dumping junk along the isolated, unlit, uninhabited stretch of road for the 60-something years he can remember — he is a third-generation farmer — and probably longer. And for all that time, he says, West Manchester Township has been taking care of the problem.

That might be true, say the folks running the township today. “But it’s basically gotten to the point where the township just cannot afford to continue to be the garbage man for any private property,” said Kelly Kelch, the township manager.

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Kelch said it’s a question of fairness: The township wouldn’t clean up someone else’s property, regardless of who dumped the junk, so it shouldn’t do so for Campbell. Besides, he says, the north side of the same road has far less junk, because — he said — the owner of that land does more to prevent dumping and clean it up when it does happen.

More than two years ago, the township told Campbell it would begin fining him $500 per day for violating a township ordinance if he didn’t clean up the mess.

Campbell sued the township, and last week, Court of Common Pleas Judge Chris Menges sided with Campbell — to a point.

Menges — in an order distributed Tuesday — agreed the ordinance is “vague, unconsitutionally ambiguous and, therefore, unenforceable,” which might not seem to leave much room for doubt.

But later in the same order, Menges told Campbell: “I do not want you to leave here thinking somehow that you have won. Technically, you did, but [the township is] going to rewrite the ordnance,” which indeed Kelch confirmed would happen; he estimated the full process could take six to nine months.

The issue with the current ordinance — Campbell’s lawyer argued, and Menges agreed — is it doesn’t do enough to distinguish between the people doing the illegal dumping and someone like Campbell, who considers himself a victim of illegal trespassing and dumping. But Menges made clear a different ordinance could be constitutional — indeed, he gave the township tips about what such an ordinance might include.

As plaintiff against the township but also one of its biggest taxpayers, Campbell lamented paying for both sides of the dispute and said he guessed the township could clean the street “for the next hundred years” with the money it has spent defending the suit.

Kelch said the township has offered to work with Campbell — and, for example, to haul away the current junk at no cost — if Campbell would assume responsibility going forward. Kelch and Campbell agree preventing the dumping in the first place would be preferable to cleaning it, but they disagree about who can and should do that.

Kelch, for example, suggested — and Menges, in his order seemed to agree with — measures such as lights and video cameras; Campbell said keeping residents safe is a township’s “core responsibility.”

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Menges implored Campbell to work with the township toward a solution.

“We all know small problems are much easier to solve than large problems are,” Menges said. “I get that [this] is a large problem. So even if you cannot solve it, but you can minimize it down to 10 percent of what it is, that is a huge victory for everybody.”

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