Or more accurately, the nightmare that never ends at this point.
It’s also why after my husband complained yet again to DOT, we woke up to this the other morning.
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A crew of workers with multiple pieces of heavy machinery …
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Spreading a line of dirt right next to the road.
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Which in theory sounded good.
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But in actuality will make no difference or help the original erosion problem.
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Because after sweeping it…
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The packer didn’t pack it.
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But road his little machine on the very edge of the road never compacting or even touching the dirt.
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WTH?
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We’d just started to see some grass grow on the sides which we were hoping would keep the erosion to a minimum…. and now there’s more unpacked dirt to wash away.
The day my husband had been waiting for finally arrived. The top road engineer from the State (and two support staff for backup) were here. Outnumbered and surrounded, my husband was undeterred and ready to discuss the ditch from Hell in great detail.
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He explained how repeated snow plow drivers and mailman had driven on the edge and ruined the structural integrity.
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He explained how the sides have been caving in and filling the ditch with dirt, sand, gravel and chunks of road tar.
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He complained about the town scraping off all his hard won grass that helped the erosion.
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He told them he wanted to install .. at our expense…a perforated drainage pipe and fill in the ditch to bring a level lawn out to the road … like our neighbors on both sides and across the street.
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And that’s when things got tense. Because no matter how many reasons my husband gave, the head engineer would not be swayed.
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He kept repeating the ditch was necessary for proper road drainage. Which is odd, because it was the previous owner who (illegally) dug the ditch to begin with.
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Nothing my husband said… and believe me over the course of an hour he said a lot…. could sway the official.
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The end result?
Before the state paves the entire road, which will happen in the next few weeks, a crew will arrive to completely dig out and shore up the sides of our ditch. They will lay new dirt on the sides and scatter grass seed.
Big whoop.
To me this will be even worse than what we have now. It will be steeper… and harder to mow and weed whack than ever. Grass seed? Useless, it will just wash away into the ditch.
And before you say we should have just filled it in ourselves and not told them? The official told us if we did that we’d be given a huge fine and forced to dig it back out again… and if we didn’t? They’d come dig it out themselves and charge us for doing it.
They say you can’t fight city hall. Apparently you can’t fight the Maine DOT either.
Now that the driveway replacement is complete, it’s time to battle the ditch from Hell.
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This feature has been the bane of my husband’s existence ever since we moved to this house 21 years ago.
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It runs the full length of our property on both sides of the driveway and was dug (illegally as it turns out) by the previous owner.
Our neighbors on the left don’t have a ditch.
Our neighbors on the right don’t have a ditch.
The farm across the street doesn’t have a ditch… but we have a ditch that over the years has been caving in, filling up with gravel and broken road tar and becoming a nightmare to mow, weed whack and kept clean.
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My husband had the grass growing all the way to the road until the town in their infinite wisdom decided to scrape the sides down to gravel last year.
This increased the caving in by making it more unstable to snow plows and mail trucks that ride on top.
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Needless to say we’d had enough of maintaining said ditch and asked the driveway company what it would cost to lay perforated pipe the entire length and cover it with dirt we could seed and mow a flat lawn all the way to the road.
We were told nothing could be done until we had a signed permit. So we went to the town… who told us to go to Maine public works.
So we went to Maine public works… who told us to go the state DOT.
So we went to the state DOT… who told us to go to the town.
After a week and a half of this insanity I wanted to repeatedly stab myself with a fork… but my husband figured marching up to the capitol and finding the head man would be more productive. So that’s what he did. He found the guy who’s in charge of every single road in the state. He explained the situation and arranged for this overworked fellow to visit our property in order to give permission for us to fill in our ditch.
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Head guy came, head guy looked, head guy listened, and said he had to talk to legal.
A week later head guy called with a denial.
To which we wanted to say…
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The lame excuse he gave was this…. if he granted permission for us to fill in the ditch, who’s to say the next owner wouldn’t want up dig it out again.
What the …. what?
Who cares!
To pacify my irate husband, he agreed to visit us again with a proposal that the state could come and dig out the ditch, build up the sides and make it more stable… at their cost. Which sounds good in theory but in reality would just put us back to where we were 21 years ago with a steeper ditch that’s harder to keep clean. And I hate to say it, but we aren’t getting any younger.
Head guy is coming back next week.
I’ll keep you posted.
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 