Wetlands Mania

I live in a development on the west side of Prospect Lake. My neighbors and I have to maintain our own private roads, Lakeside Drive and Second Street. They run perpendicular to the hill that slopes down to the lake on that side, so we have constant problems with washouts, etc., and have to engineer ways to get water down the hill through culverts and ditches so the roads don't become dangerous or impassable.

At one particularly troublesome spot, water goes under a road via a culvert, then through a ditch down to a culvert under Lakeside, through that culvert and then on to the lake. The ditch between the two roads is on the line between two lots, each privately owned by different owners.

The problem is that the culvert under Second Street can't handle all the water when it rains really hard, or when the snow melts in the spring, or in snow/ice situations. So water flows over the road, often creating dangerous conditions, especially in winter, and water backs up on the uphill side of Second Street, causing a mess and jeopardizing a nearby well. The situation could be fixed by putting in a larger culvert under Second Street. But that would necessitate enlarging the ditch that goes down to Lakeside, so the consent and participation of the two owners of the lots (between which the ditch runs) would be necessary.

At our property owners meeting this July, we were going to vote to put in the larger culvert because one of the lot owners volunteered to enlarge the ditch if we would pay to rent the equipment required to do that, which we were ready to do. Sounds like a good, fair, neighborly way to handle a real safety problem, right?

Not so fast. There are "wetlands" close by. (I put it in quotes because ordinary human beings wouldn't think they were wetlands.) Replacing the culvert and enlarging the ditch would require filing a "Notice of Intent" with the Conservation Commission and the state DEP, and, with respect to enlarging the ditch, the filings could only be done by the property owner who volunteered to do the work. And the filings and related costs would be greater than the cost of renting the equipment and would probably double or triple the cost of the whole project, and would likely result in an "Order of Conditions" that would likely involve even more costs. And one of the conditions would likely be that replacement "wetlands" would have to be created covering an area equal to the area of the "wetlands" destroyed, meaning some nearby property owner would have to volunteer to have part of his property dedicated to being a "wetland".

Not surprisingly, no one volunteered. And not surprisingly, the ditch-enlarging volunteer changed his mind about the whole thing in a New York second. So a rational solution to a serious safety problem fell apart and was abandoned in another New York second. I would describe the reaction of the people at the meeting as one of stunned silence.

I think this is insane. Water is going to go down the hill to the lake no matter what is done or is not done. And washouts and ice on a road are real problems requiring real solutions. The people who think this grandiose, self-imposed, no-exceptions scheme for "protecting our wetlands" should be rigorously enforced even if it results in injuries to automobiles and people need to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Fat chance.

Any wetlands defenders out there? Post a response.