Life on Easement Street

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Life on Easement Street				May 25, 2005

The line between dream and nightmare is a thin one, and especially when the dream involves owning property. We all know about the American dream, and every young couple has some patriotic implant in their brains that sends them on a lemming-like quest for the perfect home.

When they find it, they become enthused with a near religious rapture over the fact that they now have a place to call their own. Never mind that they have a mortgage that will enshroud them in debt for 30 years. Nor are they daunted by the prospect of cleaning, painting, wallpapering, unclogging gutters, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, replacing roofs, mopping flooded basements or exhuming dead squirrels from the chimney.

They have a piece of the pie, acreage to call their own, and a deed that makes it all very legal. Just to prove that they’re part of a larger community of other happy homeowners they also have a hefty real estate tax to fork over to the treasurer of their locality every year. But that’s okay. It just proves that they’ve left the renting peons behind and are now part of that exclusive club to which only assessment-ridden, property-tax-paying landowners belong.

To assure that their assessments will frequently be raised, they spruce up the house, carefully manicure the lawn and plant trees around the edges of their property.

Sometimes the dream bubble suddenly bursts and the nightmare begins. One morning they arise to see hordes of trucks fortified with cherry-pickers surrounding their property. Atop the cherry pickers are chain-saw-wielding, Hun-like warriors whacking and hacking at their trees and shrubs. Pine trees, like corpses in a horror flic, are cruelly being severed in half. Pecans and maples are denuded of branches and leaves. Where trees that would have warmed the cockles of Joyce Kilmer’s heart once stood, there now are left phallic, salacious stumps that have suffered the ultimate humiliation and degradation.

But not to worry. These are the “tree experts” under contract to our state power company. It’s their job as experts to make hash of (or as they put it, “trim”) any natural product that may or may not grow tall enough to collapse onto the power lines if Isabel decides to come back. And they can do this because they have what’s called an easement on your property.

Who issues these easements no one seems to know, though they are frequently hidden in the depths of your deed. What we do know is that property owners are totally helpless when it comes to fighting such incursions and are left on their own to beg for the lives of their trees and shrubs. No one in county or city government will intercede for you, nor can you appeal the decisions of the tree hackers, since they’ve worked their way before you can get phone to ear.

Almost as popular with property owners are the underground cable layers, or the cable guys, as they’re frequently called. The cable guys have easements too, which means they can invade your property and make mincemeat of your lawns, your gardens or anything else that’s in their way. They dig up the ground with tank-mounted giant claws, fashion gorgeous trenches and gigantic holes and generally leave your property looking like one humongous mud flat. Then they leave.

You may have noticed the mass mauling of property that’s been going on for months now along Route 60 West from the Williamsburg city line to Toano. Trenches for cable and tunnels for cable tubes have been part of the landscape along the highway for what seems like eons. Property owners along extended Richmond Road have no idea where these cable guys come from or what the cable is for. Rumor has it that it’s a communication cable for the Department of Homeland Security, but no one knows for sure. Or is telling.

As for James City, it seems to be totally out of the loop. Supervisors know little if anything about an operation that has been tearing up county land for months, and homeowners have been left in even deeper shadows.

It was only after questioning two supervisors, the county attorney and, finally, James City Service Authority general manager Larry Foster that I learned the easement was issued by VDOT, and that the fiber optic cable will run from Virginia Beach to Richmond. Who is installing the cable and for what it will be used is still a mystery.

Certainly we can do better than this. At the very least, homeowners in areas affected by such operations should be informed of impending work. They should be told who’s doing the work, how it will affect their property, how long it will take and what restorative procedures will be put into effect once the work is done. And certainly there should be a copy of whatever easements are involved in some county office for homeowners to verify.

The fact that homeowners have to plumb the depths of county government for answers to their questions about such matters makes property ownership in James City more of a nightmare and a bad joke than the dream it should be.