We arrived in NEWA the last week of August, ready to begin school and our new adventure. I’ve failed to mention that it hasn’t been real quiet around here since. It hasn’t been a huge inconvenience because the noise is supposed to be gone soon.
A couple miles to the north, the federal government is building a new border station at the Waneta Crossing. I haven’t been down there yet, but they are removing quite a bit of fill material. Most of it has been dumped into an old gravel pit just up the road from us, so although we can hear the trucks turning up Cedar Creek Road, they haven’t been travelling past the property.
Until two days ago.
Two days ago, the dump trucks began coming past our property. And into the next driveway. And dumping along the property line between us and our southern neighbors. And there is a property line issue we were ignoring because it’s in our favor. And it’s also the lowest point on the property. And there is seasonal run off and pooling of water there. And, and, and are you starting to get the picture?
So our new neighbors to the south who are completely aware that the survey resulted in their northern border shrinking, and who also are completely aware of the raging run off of water every spring, have decided to allow a federal contractor to dump several (like 400 so far and it continues) dump truck size loads of sand along their northern, our southern border. Without bothering to talk to us.
Welcome to local politics NEWA style.
Then, of course, while I was taking pictures (for our protection), here they come to the fence with “Do you have a problem with this?” Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. Never mind that altering water courses in the State of Washington is a crime, not to mention pissing off your neighbors when the flood waters have nowhere to go but farther onto their property. And let’s not even mention that when all that sand gets transported (by spring runoff) down to the creek, it will eventually build a damn big enough to flood the entire valley south of us.
We don’t have to worry about the flood. The creek flows north here. We have 58’ of fall of the creek on our property (we thought ahead, unlike SOME people). But the people just to the south of our neighbors happen to have an aircraft runway across their property. I wonder if they have pontoons for their planes?
So here they are, working day and night and dumping and dumping and dumping. They have lights to dump all night and a loader to spread it all around. This is your federal tax dollars at work people. As the story goes (if it’s true), the contractor ran out of gravel pit (they filled it completely) and need two weeks to get the proper permits to start taking the material to Canada. Since two weeks is a vacation they cannot afford and since our neighbor drives one of their trucks, why not just dump it on his 10 acre parcel in the meantime? Never mind permits or environmental impact studies, just get rid of the damn stuff. The Harinas are from Nevada, what’s a little sand to them?
Since I’ve already written and sent a not so polite letter to the contractor, I’m sure there will be future posts on this subject.
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