Waitsfield landowner Virginia Houston alleges that the town of Waitsfield has violated her civil rights over the past 18 years, prior to and including the town’s attempts to develop a municipal water system. Such violations should entitle her to attorney’s fees and costs, her court complaint argues.
That system is currently under construction and is designed to rely on water from a well drilled off Reed Road. That land abuts Houston’s property on that road. Since December, the town has been in negotiations with Houston and another property owner (Jean Damon) to purchase just less than three acres of land around the well. Waitsfield drilled the well in 2006 based on its assumption that Reed Road was a town road.
Last November, a Superior Court judge ruled that the town had not sufficiently demonstrated that the road was a town road. That ruling came after the town had secured funding, awarded contracts and begun work on the $7.5 million municipal project. Voters approved the project in 2008. The project will supply water to Waitsfield Village, Irasville, Old County Road and Tremblay Road.
When the town entered into negotiations with Houston and Damon in December 2010, the town concurrently began the process of condemnation of the land around the well. After a January 31 condemnation hearing, the town continued negotiating and also continued the condemnation process. At the end of March, the town completed the condemnation process and mailed Houston a check for $41,137 which remains uncashed, according to her attorney Paul Gillies. As of this week, the town is still in negotiations with the landowners.
After the March condemnation decision was issued by the town, Gillies filed a complaint with Vermont Superior Court alleging, among other things, that Houston’s civil rights had been systematically violated over the past 18 years. The complaint alleges that the town blocked Houston’s attempts to develop her property by denying her permits to develop her property –although the town did issue her a permit to truck water off her property in 1996 after town voters passed a zoning amendment to allow commercial water extraction as a conditional use in the town.
The complaint also charges that the town continuously and actively blocked Houston from developing her property by zoning amendments, taking of an easement for a wellhead protection zone (although the town’s wellhead protection easement overlaps Houston’s wellhead protection zone where no development can take place) and now by its condemnation proceedings.
The complaint goes on to note that the town has deprived Houston from all economically viable use of her property without compensation, appropriated her science and aquifer research – in violation of her civil rights under the 5th and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution and under Article 2 of the Vermont Constitution.
The complaint seeks damages for Houston, an order vacating the town’s March condemnation decision, a determination that there is no public necessity for the town’s water supply, damages to Houston for the use of her land since the drilling of the town well, damages for her science/data, damages for her pain and suffering, plus exemplary and punitive damages.
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