Eminent Domain is Such a Drag When It's Your Domain
Just when you think life might settle down, the universe decides it's not finished with you yet. This time it was a letter from my neighborhood association announcing the widening of our road to accommodate bike lanes.
The good news is: construction won't start for another year and bike lanes are a fine idea. The bad news is how much of my front yard is slated to disappear. When I looked at the graphic depiction, I burst into tears. Then I recovered and called the County to have someone come show me exactly what would be taken out.
Thirteen years ago I bought this house, uninhabitable at the time, with a windfall arts grant and a loan from my dying mother. In the course of shoring up the southeast corner we accumulated a certain amount of dirt, with which I made an ersatz berm between me and the road. There's a six foot drop off there, down to the drainage ditch Then I planted a hedge to block out the sound and view of speeding cars. There was already a 60-foot pine and two old plums. I planted a paper-bark maple, a crabapple, random shrubs people gave me, and lots of lavender. A few years later we put up the cat fence. My front door is 34 feet from the road.
The proposed changes will take down trees, hedge, and shrubs, and it's likely I'll have to move the lavender so they can bring in their equipment. If I want to save the crabapple and maple, I can get them moved, but the crabapple may not survive, and has a life-span of 15 years, so I'm being advised to plant a new one instead.
I've heard the County will offer me some money in exchange for this headache, but I don't know how much. That tall pine gives my house morning shade, and I'm betting the six feet or so of vertical ground they're removing from in front of my door blocks a huge amount of noise, so it will be a lot louder here. As a person who keeps her doors open all the time, I can't see how this is going to be anything but bad news. I already hear what the bike-riders say when they whiz past, now it will feel as though they're going to ride right into my lap.
I haven't explored all my options yet. Maybe I can dispute what the County wants to pay for this land grab, or cajole the designers to push all the changes across the street, where there's only a vacant lot and no pines. I don't want to move, I love it here!
I'm frustrated and pissed. But it is a great education. The right of eminent domain seems like a sad but reasonable thing when you read about it in the news, applied to some out-of-state engineering project.
Not so much fun when it's taking away your own front yard.
