So we’d made up a list of questions regarding our nice, potential property. We’d had a look at the county website and had some ‘concerns’. But, the realtor seemed to be of the opinion that at least some stuff was permitted, and so I went with cautious optimism.
See, it’s a pretty bit of land:
And it’s got a workshop / garage, and a small cabin, and a well, and power. So yay.
But when you look at the geodata plan of it, it doesn’t seem right, and there’s a lot of wetland which oddly, isn’t where you’d expect the wetland to be delineated when you’re stood there. Because it’s solid land and not wet at all.
And the reason became apparent when he looked up permits.
Garage – not permitted
Cabin – not permitted
Violation recorded – spoil tipped into wetland
…
So it turns out that we’d have to get an ecological survey done (we’ll need that pretty much anywhere), but when you look at the overlay:
Yeah, that’s the garage in the previously delinated wetland area. The reason it’s not slipping into the bog is that someone dumped a bunch of spoil into the wetland to make it drier. Since nothing’s been done to fix the permit disaster or remediate the damage to the wetland, the permit guy basically said “yeah, you’ll probably have to tear down the shop”. Then he followed that cheery news with “and you’ll also probably need to reinstate the wetland or do some kind of remedial works to it”.
Given the wetland covers most of the land we wanted to use as garden, that’s kinda it for that piece of property. Which sucks, as I’d got quite excited about it.
So now we start our search again.
