It was only a matter of time
Monday, 9:46 pm
Aug
04
2008
About three or four years ago, the house owners on the hill, behind my house, began their home improvements. The first year, they chopped down about 12 large trees, then moved out while their 1800 sq foot-ish house was gutted and two new enormous additions were built. Then they moved back in toward the tail end of the next summer. The following spring more heavy equipment arrived and a large three season room grew out of one of the new additions. Things were quiet for a while after that. Then last autumn, the bulldozers arrived and completely rearranged the topography of the property. It was rather amazing to watch. In February crews arrived to start terracing the hill. By spring, there were at least two levels of completely stoned in walls and terraces. About two weeks ago, they whacked down three more large trees on the other side of the house and brought in more bulldozers to rearrange massive amounts of dirt and some kind of earth tamping machine that made my house shake. More terracing and stone walls...three levels of stone terracing now.
It was at about that point, I thought there was going to be trouble. They have altered the hill so much that there is no place for rain to drain other than straight down the hill into my attached neighbor’s back yard.
Sure enough. Over the last week of rain, my neighbor has ended up with a lake in her back yard along with a sizable pile of dirt, stones, and silt. And...the water rushes down the hill so fast, that it sloshes right up over her bulkhead doors and pours into her basement. She tried sandbagging, but it didn’t help much. She now has about an inch of mud on her basement floor.
Obviously, this is not a good thing and something has to be done about it. I went over to take a look this evening and I’ll tell you, if it was me, my heart would be down in my shoes right about now...aside from the anger issues.
She plans to go to city hall tomorrow to see where she should start. Her son-in-law is a local contractor...he’s stopping by tomorrow to take a look and see if he can talk with the contractor up on the hill. I wish them both luck. The people up there yelled at me when I told them to stop cutting down my trees a few years ago. “NO” is not a word they like to hear. Not even when one is armed with a certified copy of the property plots and lines.
My neighbor wonders if they could be liable for cleaning her basement. It is an awful, awful mess of mud. I don’t think homeowner’s insurance will cover it since we don’t have flood insurance. Even if it was a man-made flood owing to (I’m assuming) the landscape architect’s mistakes. I’ll be watching this with a great deal of interest. This is a mistake that’s going to cost someone some unplanned jingle, I imagine. Hopefully not my neighbor.