Bulldozer butchery

There’s a new owner of the land down the road from me. He’s putting in a new house. It’s his land; that’s all well and good. It saddens me the way he’s going about it. Now I understand bulldozers and excavators really speed up a job. I don’t have any deep philosophical objections to heavy equipment. They are just tools.

Oh, but the way they are using those tools. Just because your big machines can push all the trees over doesn’t mean it’s what should happen. That’s what they did, just pushed everything over e and buried some of them with gravel. The rest have been shoved to the side of the lot in a tangled mess. The landowner will have problems from this for years to come.

Eventually, they’ll want to clean up the mess on the side of the road. It won’t be easy. I was offered free firewood once from a lot that was bulldozed in a similar manner. After a few trips I refused to try and rescue more wood. It wasn’t worth it. Some of the trees were still under a lot of tension and would spring free as they were cut -very dangerous. The wood was covered in dirt which constantly dulled the chain. Footing was all lose rocks and boulders, not something you want to stand on with a running chainsaw.

All the buried trees will, over time, slowly rot. His land will develop sinkholes and bumps that will make it very difficult to have a nice yard. I can’t wait to see how they plan on putting in a foundation on top of all this fill.

Right now they are hastily dealing with some nasty erosion problems. It’s a good thing they are working far from the lake or inspectors would be handing out some hefty fines. In fact, they lucked that most of the wetland inspectors have been laid off.

With a little planning, they could have harvested all the trees they destroyed. In fact there was probably enough quality wood there to build a nice house. There are a number of sawmills in the area who could have done the work for a very reasonable price.

I hate senseless waste and destruction, even on a relatively small scale. The trend in house construction has been to level the land, turn it into a barren lot. Then grass is rolled out and new trees planted. Of course, the new trees don’t really mature well because they are sitting in compacted mineral soil. They look good long enough to sell the house.

Whatever happened to working with the land?

-Sixbears