She has only lived here since June 2010, correct?  That means she has only experienced one spring in Belfast.  Spring in Maine is very wet.   I would recommend doing your homework before you move into a home with a stream in the back yard.

Also, an offer was made to her to repair her bank.  It would have cost her nothing, and the organization offering to fix it would have picked up the cost of a few thousand dollars.  She turned it down.  She wants $45,000 to $85,000.  It turns out this woman is unemployed and has no intention of finding a job.  She is trying to live off the taxpayers of Belfast.  She considers protesting this stream-problem her job.  As the governor said (and I am no supporter of the governor), "Get off the couch and find a job!"  

Who do you turn to?  I suggest you make a left hand turn at Exit 109 in Augusta and drive back south to Jersey.  If not, learn how to fish.  This is about a silly as saying "There's a tree in my backyard that has been there since 1947 and it's blocking the sun.  My taxpaying neighbors should remove it!"

Anyone who purchases a piece of property with a stream or major stormwater drainage flowing across it really has no business complaining about naturally occurring erosion and increased surface flows during significant rain events.

If you don't like water, purchase land at the top of the hill and leave the rest of us alone with your inane, public whining...

It was her responsibility to figure this out before she bought her house.  I recently bought a house that I knew had drainage issues from the village paving the road in front of my house.  I have to deal with it and actually, that is the best way to get it fixed. 
Sorry Laurie, you are on your own...buyer beware!  Seller should have disclosed and you can try and go after the seller...I think though, that your time to try that has come and gone.

I think it's beautiful.  I wouldn't mind having it in my back yard.  It looks like the erosion may be under control now too.  I would dress it up with a cute little water wheel and whatever else comes to mind.

Try doing anything to beautify it and they will get you for something

 I agree with common_since.  It is beautiful.  I would dress it up with flowers, and maybe build a little wooden bridge across it.  Instead of whining and complaining, which will probably not get you any place, and make enemies along the way.  Make it into something you can enjoy.  I don't mind people from out of state moving to Maine, but why does it seem that those are the ones that do a lot of the complaining, and whining.  I am sure you got a lot for your money in Maine compared to where you came from.  Just my opinion.

Agree! Spoken like a true native! 

sorry repeated itself.

Lots of common sense Mainer comments here. This sort of whining must be more commonplace in New Jersey.

I have lived here all my life, and I think she is justified in her assumptions. The rt. 1 bypass probably did not help matters. “If you’re not getting services from your city, where do you turn?” she asked. All of us poor folks on the East side of Belfast have been asking the same question for generations.

You bought it. 

Line the bank with rocks this summer when the water is low.  A couple of dump truck loads should do it. Check concrete companies.  They have plenty of rock they would be happy to sell, and it wouldn't cost more than a few hundred bucks. Or I could do it for you for a discount, say $44,495

really?

you don't think that the stream will just come back around when it "passes" the wall?

Not a "wall" but line the banks to stop the erosion.

thank you

what wall are you talking about? I'm talking about a layer of rock from the low part to the high point of the bank to stop erosion.

This is why you get a surveyor and a home inspector and anyone else you possibly can to review buildings and land before you make a purchase.  Sounds like this lady is blaming her short-comings as a home buyer on the town of Belfast.  Seems pretty foolish to me.  

My understanding of land use law in Maine is you can do whatever you want with water while it is on your property: make an interesting serpentine stream, a pond feature, a mini waterfalls, etc.  but once you send it OFF your property you become responsible for what it does to your neighbor.

Belfast city does not hold to this common law?  I would suggest to Ms. Allen that she be a little creative (with a lawyer's advice, as well as a landscaper's...) and divert that torrent onto city property, oh, I don't know--across the road surface? or under a crosswalk? or maybe even onto hospital property...  Drill a hole and dump it down there, until it comes up who knows where?  They have been doing it to her, so it must be OK, right?

Somehow, I think that might get their attention.  I would be angry too--and "have an attitude"--if I got stonewalled by bureaucrats for what seems obviously the city's doing, going back decades.  

I don't care if the current city planner was not even born when that occurred.  You are the planner, council member, mayor NOW in 2012, so solve the problem the city is causing!

City won't do it. Do it yourself. Good luck staying out of a mental hospital.

If it's a stream, you can't alter it without a good reason and a heavy-duty permit from the DEP, and possibly another one from the Army Corps of Engineers.

If it's a drainage ditch, have a ball.

Absolutely not true. I had property in Belfast with a natural spring that seeped up at the back and ran as a stream through the property, under the road through a huge culvert and down through the adjacent field to the river. In very dry years it ran little, but in wet ones it ran full all year long. At one time spring water was sold from the site so we know it was NOT a drainage ditch.

The year before we moved, two homes were built in the field, one right across the stream bed. (it was a dry year) After we moved they built a house in what had been our back yard, right over the spring head. It really made me mad at the time, but as they say, "time wounds all heels" so I am just kinda sitting back now and wondering, considering the very wet spring this year, how many sump pumps those folks are running.

So it is not entirely true that you can't, as it was very clearly done in these three instances.

As for this lady...there was an obvious channel on the property. Its not like she didn't see it. As posted earlier; buyer beware. She really needs to get over trying to blame others for her mistake.

My mistake - I should have said you can't LEGALLY alter it without all those permits, and it also has to meet the DEP's definition of a stream and/or the Army Corps' definition, which are not necessarily the same as your definition or even the same as each other for that matter. People do illegal stuff all the time. Sometimes they get caught, sometimes they don't. The DEP only has a few people to keep tabs on that kind of thing, and if the local code officer doesn't report it and no one complains, they'll never find out intil it's too late to do anything about it. That's probably what happened in your old back yard.

When you can make water run uphill on its own, let me know. Natures way is to make it flow where it wants to go, down toward the lowest point. Everyone deals with drainage issues on their property every so often, which may be be more often here the next few days.

Capillary action, and pressure will make water go up. :D.

Plants use capillary action to draw water up from the ground, and we use water pressure to get water up into our houses without electricity for our indoor plumbing. ;)

Yeah, but they do things different in Jersey. 

Have you ever lived there?

Nope, never have. Never will. Can't say I even want to go to Jersey to be honest. 

Have seen and heard many people from New Jersey and New York complaining about how we live in Maine, but that doesn't stop them from moving here and trying to change us so we're just as miserable as the place they moved here from. 

She can post all the signs she wants - it is freedom of speech. She is correct that the problem is manmade: "... in subsequent years, major new building developments have added to runoff. They include the Captain Albert Stevens School, a townhouse development on Cedar Street, the Volunteers of America senior housing complex on Congress Street, a new hospital complex on the west side of Northport Avenue, and expansions of the Tall Pines nursing home and Mid-Coast Mental Health facility, both adjacent to Seaview Terrace."
One would think that the city would not allow further use of the stream for manufactured runoff.

It's strange all the posts here by people who seem to have not RTFA.  It's clear that the increase in runoff is a result of projects the city has given permits to.  

So the city IS responsible for the problem.  

City officials need to do their job, what she's asking for isn't unreasonable at all - she can take the city to court and no doubt win.

And posters here making the go back to jersey remarks are an embarrassment to all Mainers.

I have to agree with you RoostookGuy--reading these comments telling her to go back to Jersey is  embarrassing and ignorant as well--hard to believe a true Mainer would stoop that low.

The problem did not exist until Jersey Girl moved in and created one.  The permits and stream were in place long before she ever moved to our state. Reminds me of the loon that is trying to sue the cement plant in Thomaston after he realized he bought property next to it. (real bright one he is)

Or the city folks who move in next door to a farm and start complaining about the smell of the cows and the crowing of the roosters.

SHE created the problem. Pull out the vegetation that keeps the stream bed strong and viable,and what do you expect????  Her problem...no one else's...

MyNameIsTaken is even more correct than he/she knows. Ms Allen removed all the vegetation next to her stream and installed the fence within a couple feet of the stream. She created her own problem, the erosion is 100% her own fault. That is why she is also suing Lowes, who installed the fence. In other words, she is admitting that the fault is a result of the fence.  But she does not want people to know this.  She also turned down an offer to fix her bank for free, but she is holding out for the $45,000-$85,000.  She also has no job and considers protesting her job.  She wants the city to pay her to shut up.

It seems that the city could put in a few rocks and make sure the erosion doesn't continue. Wouldn't that make sense? There seem to be some really hateful people on here. Why not get together ........gather some rocks and stop the erosion. I would call that "team work."

The problem is, she can't do anything like that without permits from DEP for riprapping a stream. She's right, it would cost a lot of money. The increased erosion is due to enhanced development, and the city should have made the developers mitigate. They could have set up a fund for things like downstream mitigation at a later time. The City should do something, but they don't want to, since, as I mentioned, they would have to go through the DEP permitting process and shell out money.

The drainage has not changed in the ten months since she moved in. Buyer beware.

Under State law and Belfast ordinances, all of these new development projects were required to conduct extensive drainage studies and to install detention ponds or mitigation so that peak runoff after the development does not increase beyond what was there before the development. This property owner has voiced many "conspiracy theories" about City officials that are out to get her and has taken hours at public City Council meetings hogging the agenda and spewing forth venom. The BDN does the City a disservice by giving this woman yet another forum to vent her accusations. She bought a property by a drainage path that has existed for decades and now she wants the other taxpayers to "fix it" for her? It is painful to listen to her go on and on and on at Council meetings when the rest of the taxpayers have other issues that must be addressed.........

Very well said...Thank you...

wish I knew how to do that..lol

There was information left out of this report. When Miss Allen purchased this property she was not aware of the stream. It was frozen over and covered in snow when she looked at it  and it was not disclosed in the paperwork from the realestate company she purchased through. (she did all this from away) I also want to mentiont that the city claims they can not do work on private property yet the city went through and dug a drainage ditch to drain water from behind the two houses across from her...on private propert. So before you Mainers wo make the "From away" spitefull comments get too excited, do some research before passing judgment. Your just making yourselves look ignorant.

 Again then go back to the real estate company and leave the city alone:)  Who the heck buys a house before seeing it?

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The damage to the stream has been perpetuated by Ms. Allen's actions...those who lived in that house before her had no issues with it. It was not until she yanked the vegetation from the streambed that she began to have issues. The erosion is a direct result of Ms. Allen's damage to the stream bank and bed...

"...she purchased the house after a divorce, moving to Belfast from New Jersey."  Relevance?

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