Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: site supervision to protect land

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Bulldozer operators, and their relatives, concrete trucks, wood delivery 
trucks, etc, often have no compunction about driving wherever they 
please. If you have land you don't want compacted, bushes you don't want 
driven over, places you don't want to start looking like, and being used 
as, roads---- you will want someone physically present to witness and 
enforce, 100% of the time that vehicles are in and out. 

I believe it was Winslow that thought they were leaving a stand of trees, 
and arrived to find them levelled. Here, we have had clear directives, 
that have been violated when someone went to lunch, left early, etc, and 
once the damage is done, it takes time to restore things. 

It is not enough to put little plastic flagging tape around things. 
Sturdy fencing is highly recommended if you are serious about keeping 
heavy equipment off an area.

I don't know your site. But if there are tree roots or whatever to 
protect, be over-vigorous about making the point-- and have someone on 
the watch as much as you possibly can. Be clear, too, whose 
responsibility it is, if a subcontractor messes up. 

It also helps to have "witnesses" around in terms of stuff like What Are 
They Burning? (Do they have permission to burn plastics and 
arsenic-etc-treated wood? Plywood?) Do you have guidelines about site 
clean-up? Where they are to store and stage materials? What they are to 
do with topsoil? How much do you expect them to sort their trash, like 
into scraps that are useful as firewood, vs painted, glued, 
particleboard, etc, that you don't want in a woodstove.  Vast amounts of 
useful wood and stuff is usually heaped at random and then either trucked 
to the dump, at your expense, or burned. The usual approach to landscape 
is scrape it all and them plant some new stuff at the end. It's not the 
same as preserving thickets and hedgerows of what grows there naturally. 
And it can be hard to grow stuff on dirt that has had heavy equipment 
tromping back and forth on it. 

Much depends on the specifics of your site, of course. Good luck, and be 
vigilant if needed,
Lynn Nadeau  RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA