The Town proposed a zoning amendment to make commercial water extraction a conditional use, but Houston did not like that because of the regulatory review it allowed the Town. She twice petitioned to have such an amendment require a two-thirds supermajority to pass. She twice proposed her own zoning amendment which would have made commercial water extraction a use by right, subject to no Town oversight. On the fifth try, an amendment allowing commercial water extraction as a conditional use was approved.
Virginia Houston applied for and received permits from the Town to truck water from her well. At the time she said she was not interested in a pipeline and said that a pipeline to bring the water into town (and avoid trucking on residential dirt roads) was cost prohibitive.
By now the Town had begun to plan for municipal water and sewage systems and began what would be a series of non-productive negotiating sessions with Houston over whether the Town might partner with her to build a pipeline, whether the Town could purchase water rights, whether the Town could purchase the property outright. During that time, Houston variously announced plans to access her property via Northfield and truck the water off, to lease or open her land for training youths, or to develop her property for housing.
Most recently, when the Town drilled its own well in the right of way off Reed Road, Houston appealed that action all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court -- which threw the case out. Prior to beginning the legal procedure for taking two small parcels of land it needs to create its wellhead protection zone, the Town had the two small parcels appraised and made fair-market value offers to the property owners.
No one can honestly say that Virginia Houston has suffered at the hands of the Town. She created her own permitting obstacles and then never used the permit she applied for and received. For over a decade she has rebuffed a dozen town representatives and officials who have tried to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement for the Town to buy into her water and/or land.
Waitsfield needs a municipal water source and having been unable to negotiate its purchase -- has had to move forward with other options.
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