COVENTRY — A number of Coventry property owners along Route 5 have voiced their concern over the removal of trees that were damaged during the ice storm in December by state highway workers. Some residents are claiming that they were robbed of firewood that they feel was rightfully theirs.
After the ice storm the state highway department was working to clean up storm damaged trees, broken limbs, branches and brush from damaged vegetation, as well as eliminate all overhead hazards due to broken limbs and branches. A large section of Route 5 needed to be cleared. During the cleanup, some wood was removed without notifying the property owners because it was an emergency project. Now, a few of those property owners are upset that they were not offered some of the burnable timber.
“We like to be good neighbors,” Scott Rogers, Director of the Vermont Agency of Transportation Operations Division, said. “The way we like to do things is to work with the property owners that are adjacent to the right-of-way, and it gets a little confusing in terms of the legality because some of the rights-of-way we own, and some we have a highway easement that controls the property. Typically, what we do is talk with the property owners in advance and offer to work with them. A lot of times that includes providing them some of the wood if it’s burnable, but in a lot of cases it’s not.”
Rogers stated sometimes property owners do retain certain residual rights, but the state can remove certain materials such as timber from the right-of-way for highway use.
“We can’t sell the wood to third parties, and we can’t take it for personal use,” Rogers said. “Along those lines it’s legitimate for us to use the timber to heat the state highway garage. But, we couldn’t use it to heat the local school for example.”
The Route 5 stretch in Coventry was especially tricky to make safe after the storm. Rogers explained that the situation needed to be addressed quickly, which resulted in the lack of notification to property owners.
“We were concerned with the potential for additional timber to fall given that we were expecting more storms. The district wanted to get it cleared out quickly. Even after we got the wood that was across the road cleared, there were still areas with some steep banks with trees above that could come down.”
On Wednesday at the Coventry Community Center there will be a meeting at 6 p.m. with Dale Perron, the manager of the Agency of Transportation District 9, and Coventry residents, to discuss the issue. For now, Perron says that if land owners want the wood back, they will work with them to resolve the issue.
Rogers expressed his commitment to working with Coventry landowners to resolve the issue also.
“We understand that people are struggling with the cold winter, and any type of heating assistance is an understandable request, so we are sympathetic to anyone who would have liked to use the material for firewood,” he said.
