Posts Tagged ‘road right of way’
Culvert Replacement
While we have been busy tending to multiple maintenance projects on our buildings, the Township in which we reside has been preparing to replace the drainage culverts beneath our street. Yesterday just happened to be the day the work started.
Once they got underway, there was only one option available exiting our driveway. Our route south was closed for the day.
I have no idea how they measure the need for replacing culverts, but there is plenty of evidence that our street is deserving of resurfacing. I am hoping the culvert work is simply a matter of taking care of things below ground before upgrading the surface above.
The road crew guys are never timid about flaunting their command of the right-of-way footage. They didn’t hold back at all in their reshaping of the landscape area immediately beyond the culvert where it opened up on our side of the road. I think it deserves to have some rock added there, but since they never have included that in the past, I’m suspecting they won’t again this time.
It would be great if they could toss some grass seed over the area I mow and replace the gravel where the entrance to our hayfield gate is located. I don’t know whether I have any say in how it is finished, or not. Maybe if I tell them I am a descendent of three important Pierce County families of 150 years ago it could give me a little extra clout.
Of course, when they are on location, I am 65-miles to the west at the day-job, so there isn’t much chance we’ll talk.
Cyndie is up at the lake this week, so I’ll just have to settle with whatever the road crew sees fit to do.
It is their right-of-way after all. I trust they know what they are doing.
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Extreme Pruning
I understand that there is a significant road right-of-way distance that the township is responsible for managing, but I didn’t think our low-traffic rural road warranted clearance as wide as a county road. Had I known they were going to do such extreme pruning to our road this summer, I wouldn’t have wasted a good part of a day doing a quaint version of the job myself this spring.
Back sometime in May I suppose it was, I had taken the pole-saw to the trees after a close call on my bike. When rolling down our driveway, I couldn’t see if there was anyone coming from up the hill until just as I reached the road. It didn’t allow time for a calm stop, if you know what I mean.
On Thursday afternoon, I started mowing the grass and came upon a very strange item obstructing my progress along our driveway. As I was picking it up, I saw Jackie driving in and I held up the shredded shrapnel of a leg-sized tree for her to see and gave a quizzical expression of “What the heck?”
She rolled down her window and told me there had been some serious work done along the road because there were pieces of trees all over our trail.
It surprised me a little, because they had already come by relatively recently to cut the weeds down like they do every year.
This time was different. For the first time since we’ve lived here, they came by with some monster machine that eats trees and spits the pieces out hundreds of feet away.
I would have loved to have been around to see the spectacle, except I don’t think there is a safe distance from which you could view it, based on the size of scary chunks of tree pieces that are now strewn surprisingly long distances away from the scene of the carnage.
They left the cottonwood trees, though. For now, anyway.
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I wouldn’t be surprised to discover they left them only because the size of those trees would require different equipment.
I’m a little sad that the “efficiency” of using a machine that chews up anything it touches ends up leaving so many shredded half-trees and tangles of branches. The front of our property looks like an advertisement for disarray and neglect.
I want to go cut this poor remnant to the ground.
Or, I suppose I could make a flat cut at the top and balance a stone on it, for accent.
It looks like they left rabbit ears on it. Maybe I should carve a bunny face.
If I could reach as high as their machine, I’d cut off the 18-inch shredded limb stumps on the side of the cottonwoods, the way a proper branch pruning is supposed to be done for a healthy tree.
Maybe their not doing so is a clue about the future of those cottonwoods.
Time will tell.
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Relative Something 