I am unsure what I should be doing this morning. I own a house (my parents live in it–not me) in an area that had high winds yesterday. A 30 foot tall evergreen tree on the property came down in the wind and is currently blocking our driveway. Normally, we would just get someone out to clean up the tree and move on. This is different.
The tree was on the city utility right of way. About 3 months ago, the city dug a trench for new sewer pipe through the yard deep enough to cut through the tree’s roots. We knew it at the time. Now that the tree is down, it’s easy to see the difference in the older roots that were cut vs the roots that broke when the tree came down last night. We’ve taken lots of photos. It’s entirely possible that the damage the city did to the roots was unavoidable but it seems obvious to me that those cut roots are the reason the tree came down.
There are no other downed trees or limbs in our immediate neighborhood. In addition to being absolutely gorgeous, the tree blocked the view from both the yard and the house of a busy street a couple of blocks away.
I am not heartbroken or angry. It’s easy to keep things in perspective these days. I am however upset at the loss of the tree from an aesthetic (and maybe property value??) perspective. What are my rights? What should I do?
You can plant in the utility’s right of way but can’t expect compensation for the plantings lost due to utility work. That is my understanding.
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Similar thing happened at my parents, their very private backyard wax ruined when the town paved the street behind their yard and took down the trees (that were covered for decades with beautiful Ivy). The town planted 2 wisteria plants that of course died. I had to sell the house 5 years later and I’m sure we lost 5 figures (the view from the kitchen turned into looking at a street and commercial building).
Are you looking for money? Or just having the tree replaced? If you lived here, I’d first tell you to contact the head of the utility department in question (in our case, the Director of Sanitation), and discuss what happened and what you want. If it’s just having a tree replaced, they might do that. (We probably would.) But likely, it would be escalated to the City Attorney where you’d file a claim and it would go through the City’s insurance company. What would be paid out or done, if anything, depends on the what’s spelled out either in the City Code or in your easement agreement.
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I agree that if it is a right of way (or easement) you still own the land (and the tree). The city has the right to go onto to land and do whatever it needs to do. Sometimes (not always) the city is required to put the property back in to the condition it found it, like if they took out a fence or tree, they’d replace it. Not always as they don’t want you to build a garage or something to prevent access to a back alley or open space.
I think it is worth filing a claim that they did damage to the tree and should have removed it or made sure it wouldn’t fall down. They may not be required to replace it, but may do so if they want trees in that area of the town.
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If your state follows it since an easement in favor of the city was involved, you might want to familiarize yourself with the “Hawaiian Rule” , flora, and property damage.
Following up…I forgot about this because it turned out to be a non issue. I called the city the day after it happened. They sent someone out to look who immediately saw the issue with the cut roots and loaded the tree up and hauled it off. The director of public works called me later that afternoon to apologize and promised to replace the lost tree with another large tree of our choosing. The home is in a small suburb surrounded by an otherwise large Midwestern city. I love small towns.
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Yay! I’m so glad it worked out well! Yeah for small towns! (I’m in one too, though technically a city. 40K people)
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