Last week, we mentioned another line list violation on our property. This is, you might recall, an ongoing problem. First there was the matter of moving the neighbor’s dirt to our lot, then there was the dumping of the neighbor’s sludge into a hole on our property. And then this past week, we saw this:
Crews were cutting down trees two properties over. Inexplicably, they then brought the logs over to our property and started dropping them on to our “save” pile. Why? We have no idea. But we can tell you that we didn’t like it. We notified our ROW agent and he made sure they stopped. The explanation was that they thought they were doing us a favor, assuming that we would want more fire wood.
We don’t know whether that explanation is an honest one; perhaps it is. And we also recognize that this is a relatively minor matter; we know that we’re a little sensitive about these things. And it’s not even that we might not want the wood. Rather, it’s the principle of the thing. The issue– you’d think this would be obvious by now–is respect for us and our property. Having a right of way does not mean that crews can do whatever they please, however they please.
I understand your frustration.
Enbridge trucked in semis loaded with brush, tree stumps and tree limbs from “…who knows where?…”, to deposit them into the tree shredder that was parked on my land. I have no idea what diseases and bugs contaminated this debris. For days I helplessly watched the thick clouds of dust and dirt, caused by the shredding process, blow directly into our healthy forest, across my barnyard and into the corn field
. My land has been condemned There is no agreement for Enbridge to violate. However, when my day in court comes, I will be showing video of Enbridge’s contamination of the environment, as well as, this “NEIGHBOR’s” homestead.
Another comment on construction violations: Our property has an open cut drainage ditch which prevents flooding of our yard from the pond next door. Our contract specifically states Enbridge will keep a drainage operating during and after construction sufficient to prevent flooding of our property. They disregarded this agreement and destroyed the ditch, filled it with dirt, etc every day. Every day we had to be on the jobsite to either clean it out ourselves or walk around looking for some type of supervisor. After weeks of this they finally put a pipe in the ditch to facilitate drainage while construction was taking place. However, as we speak the operator has dumped dirt at the end of the pipe and buried it (again) and we must find a supervisor to be sure it is open. Also, our contract specifically states that Enbridge will not encroach our property outside the tws, especially in the area of the existing fence. That is exactly what they did this morning (I have emailed pictures I am hopeful they will be posted on the site). Again the operator refused to move and I had to walk down the pipeline looking for a supervisor. I did find Mr. Paul Hines who was very helpful and spoke with the crew and had them move. However, our orange construction barricade fencing (which we bought ourselves Enbridge did not provide) was damaged and torn about 20′ long; we had to go out after 3 days of it laying there and fix it ourselves while they were working. Now it is full of their dirt pile, leaning on the fence they were supposed to not encroach and not giving any protection to our property. Clearly Enbridge is violating our contract – it seems they feel contracts and laws do not apply to them.