Town Hearing

[Inspector]

...and your main problem in life is that the government is hitting you with taxes and environmental laws? Sorry, but this just proves that you've made the bed you're sleeping in.

Zoning laws are not morally correct. If you want a contract for what can be build in a neighborhood, then you sign a contract with your neighbors. Zoning laws, on the other hand, are based on the premise that the government controlls the land and what can be done with it, rather than the property owners. Zoning laws are neither necessary or proper. You've given your sanction to not only those who are destroying you, but also their means of doing so.

[aequalsa]

Buys it from whom, a=a?

Whoever owned it before. Should I understand you to mean your statement in regard to the first claim on a piece of property?

[IAmMetaphysical]

Yes. In order to claim a "piece of land" as property you must change it from the metaphysically given state it is in, including planting trees and a garden to create your own "forest."

[mweiss]

Ayn Rand once stated when asked about Welfare: “The system already exists; use it.”

Since we have a compulsory tax system, and there are certain laws we are compelled to obey, we feel that we are at least entitled to certain protections under those laws.

It’s not unlike demanding better curriculum in public schools, which we are forced to pay for anyway.

While I agree in general terms, that one should be free to do as one pleases with one’s property, one cannot be totally moral by taking the sterilized and isolated approach that a couple of the more respected posters here are taking, without considering the whole system involved.

For instance, a few here believe that it is okay to pollute ground waters, since, as they espouse, it is owned by no one. Therefore if one pollutes the water to a certain extent, those who use the water for drinking should suddenly be saddled with the cost of water filtration systems. Hmmm… that sounds like an initiation of force against the other users of the water.

The young folks here who read a couple of Objectivist books and proclaim themselved “Objectivists” and go around spouting simplistic views without an understanding of the hierarchy of how those views fit in with a larger system is quite sophmoric.

I was that way too, when I first studied Objectivism in 1962. But then I started to grasp a wider range of integrations—that every personal activity has an impact on someone. Yes, even a failure to wear a seatbelt has a potential impact on some EMS person who has to scrape your bloody remains off the highway because you were thown 100’ from your car when it crashed because of a tire blowout that you could not have planned for. Yes, when you put too many septic systems in a small area, the e-choli bacteria in the ground water rises and the damage is cumulative over time. At what point does the pollution take away the quality of life from those surrounding the development?

Many young so-called “Objectivists” seem to take this notion of the virtue of selfishness too literally. I noticed that last year when in discussing a thread about loud music and disturbing the neighbors, many of the folks on this forum were having a difficult time determining if there was a moral issue at all, and then arguing whether it was a case of trespass, and if so, what level of noise was permissible, etc. The point is, when someone is about to take an action that will have an IRREPARABLE harmful effect on a resource that a number of individuals in an area depend upon, and when it can be scientifically proven that such an action could irreparably harm said resouce to the point where it is of impaired value to the established individuals who have been using it for a long time, then I contend that there is an initiation of force by the developer by intent to build those septic systems so close together. That is irrational selfishness, because one is doing it for “profit at any cost” and in this case at the cost of the existing homeowner’s quality of drinking water.

Since we are living in a society that restricts what we can do with our property, it should at least be equal across the board. Giving one developer a special privilage that we don’t get amounts to a violation of “equal protection” under law.

Sure, I can look at it the Libertarian/Anarchist way of morality and say I’m okay with that and I’ll just drink e-choli in my water until I get sick enough to have to buy a water treatment system. And that seems to be the general view espoused by a few of you—most surprising because the persons who supported that view are the persons I generally find myself most in agreement with on other issues. But on this matter, you’re sounding like anarchists.

If this developer can divide up this land, and we can’t do the same and sell parts of our lots for profit, then it’s fundamentally a skewed system. And if we can, then out the window goes the whole purpose of zoning. Zoning is meant to protect me, a homeowner, from you, who want to put in a coal mine just 50’ from my front door. If you think zoning is immoral, just try living next door to a noisy 24-hour tire repair shop with air guns and jackhammer noises going all day and night.

[Inspector]

I repeat:

Zoning laws are not morally correct. If you want a contract for what can be build in a neighborhood, then you sign a contract with your neighbors. Zoning laws, on the other hand, are based on the premise that the government controlls the land and what can be done with it, rather than the property owners.

and David's point:

If the neighbors ... render the water in the neighborhood toxic, then they have trespassed and can be sued. The neighbors, not the developer. The person who causes the actual damage, not the person who built the building which the ... polluting neighbor moved into.

Do you understand the distinction being made here, Mweiss?

[mrocktor]

Do you have an argument that there should be a law that prevents sucking a river dry, or that you have a right to well-water in any way, shape, or form?

Yes. A man comes to a totally unoccupied place and establishes himself by a river - or digs a well, as you prefer. His identifying of that water as a resource and accessing it makes it his. He used his mind to locate a piece of nature as something useful to him, and acted to use it.

He does not have to claim the whole river, or all the underground water - he actually has no claim to the whole. He does have a claim to what he identified and accessed. If someone diverts the river upstream - his property is violated. If someone pours waste into the river or ground water that affects his previous usage (drinking, for instance) - his property is violated.

It is really so simple that I am at a loss as to how to explain it better.

The right to property is not the right to the values you identify, it is the right to the values you MAKE.

Untouched, unkown nature is not a value. In finding it, figuring out how to access it, you have MADE a value. Even if you don't touch it.

Edited February 13, 2007 by mrocktor

[DavidOdden]

A man comes to a totally unoccupied place and establishes himself by a river - or digs a well, as you prefer. His identifying of that water as a resource and accessing it makes it his. He used his mind to locate a piece of nature as something useful to him, and acted to use it.

Okay, so this is one part of your argument, but for the life of me I don't see how you can reconcile it with this:

He does not have to claim the whole river, or all the underground water - he actually has no claim to the whole.

Let's turn the clock back a few hundred years when nobody owned the West. If I see a valley and a mountain, I can use my mind and say "I like that, it is mine, I claim it, as far as the eye can see, and then further". I actually go to Montana and claim the entire Rockies. I can do this, by your "recognise and access" rule. Now why, then, can't I make the same claim to a river? It seems to me that I could just as easily claim the Mississippi River, all I need to do is recognise that it's something I want, and I have to access it (I guess that means, for example, "touch it"). Or you could lay claim to all of the game in Montana, because you recognise that it is a value to you. Your logic would also say that I get to lay claim to the air and the clouds; after all, I can easily recognise the value of both air and clouds, and I can either look at the clouds thereby accessing them, or breathe the air, accessing it.

If you don't like this conclusion, you can explain your reasoning better. A man who wishes to lay claim to a pure source of ground water should lay claim to the surface and sub-surface rights of a very large tract of land -- I'd suggest a good 5 miles on all sides. If you own the land, you can control what is on the land.

Let me suggest a different way for you look at the issue of property rights. You don't have the right to a desired effect, you own some specific piece of land and hope to use it for the purpose of such and such effect. If your understanding of reality is incorrect, you won't get that effect, thus if you own too small a piece of land, you won't be guaranteed the peaceful divorced-from-humanity existence that you seek. In the current case, the problem arises from a decision to buy too-small a plot. Size does matter.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I aked you for an argument that proves something about property rights, and what you provided me with is a description of your position. I'm looking for the argument part, i.e. the reduction to axiomatic and logical integration part.

[IAmMetaphysical]

Untouched, unkown nature is not a value. In finding it, figuring out how to access it, you have MADE a value. Even if you don't touch it.

You're equivocating on the verb "make."

The right to property is the right to the products of your labor, thats it.

[mrocktor]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I aked you for an argument that proves something about property rights, and what you provided me with is a description of your position. I'm looking for the argument part, i.e. the reduction to axiomatic and logical integration part.

I'll start with this, since it is the most important point and should clarify the rest.

Man survives by reason, by observing nature, understanding it and acting uppon it to produce material values that benefit his life. Denied the use of the results of his productive effort, man cannot survive. This is the derivation of the right to property from the right to life. What I am arguing is that denied the ability to act uppon nature, man cannot produce. Or, more specifically, denied access to that part of nature he had harnessed, man cannot produce. This extends the right to property from the results of man's effors to the resources he uses to produce them.

This formulation does not support my previous "identify and access" definition. It supports "identify and harness", requiring actual use to establish ownership (and establishing ownership to the extent of the usage). From this perspective, the surveyor who finds an oil field but has no means to explore it does not own it. What he sells the developer is the knolwedge of its location - not the oil field itself which remains unowned until claimed by use.

I believe this formulation does not have the problem you identified with your "claiming all of the game in Montana" example. That claim could only be established by someone actually hunting the entire range of that state (a large trapping corporation could come to have such a claim). The issue of "I see it, I like it" is also resolved.

In the case of the river, if a pioneer establishes himself midstream and extracts X amount of water for drinking, he has a claim to the extent of that usage. If he fishes as well, he has a claim to that usage. If he also uses a boat to transport his produce downriver to a town, he has a claim to that as well.

If someone moves in upriver and dumps something in the water that makes it innapropriate for drinking, the pioneer has a claim against him. If its some chemical that kills all the fish, he has a claim against him. If someone builds a dam between him and the town, he has a claim against them. These claims are based on the fact that he came first, identified and used the resource - destroying that resource violates his property.

Why does he not own the whole river in every respect? Because the whole river in every respect is not what is needed for him to be able to produce as he was. Damming the river upstream does not hurt him at all. Other fishermen up or donwstream don't hurt him unless they wipe out the fish. Other boats on the river don't hurt his ability to get to town. Even a dam between him and a town that has a lock system that can fit his boat does not impede his activities.

These rights, as all rights, do not require anyone to provide you with resources and do not allow you to establish diffuse claims. If hundreds of farms are built upstream of our pioneer's land and their byproducts collectively make the water undrinkable, he can't sue all of them collectively. If he can prove that a specific one of them has caused him damage, he has a valid claim.

Let me suggest a different way for you look at the issue of property rights. You don't have the right to a desired effect, you own some specific piece of land and hope to use it for the purpose of such and such effect. If your understanding of reality is incorrect, you won't get that effect, thus if you own too small a piece of land, you won't be guaranteed the peaceful divorced-from-humanity existence that you seek. In the current case, the problem arises from a decision to buy too-small a plot. Size does matter.

This is incorrect. It allows another person to deliberately destroy your ability to use your property in the way you have chosen to by altering the land around it. All of these are permissible under your view:

• Diverting a river from your property
  
• Diverting a river into your property
  
• Dumping raw sewage into the river upstream of you
  
• Dumping raw sewage into the underground water upstream of your well
  
• Building a dam at the point a river exits your property, flooding it
  
• Pouring smoke and soot into the air upwind of your property
  

Your argument of "you don't have a right to a desired effect" could be used to combat any damages suit in result of the above actions.

"You don't have a right to having this water flow through your land, you just expected it to flow that way"

"You don't have a right to not have water flowing thorugh your land, you just expected it not to. You should have build your house on higher ground"

"You don't have a right to clean water, you only expected it to be clean. You should have installed a filter."

"You don't have a right to not live in a marsh, you only expected your land to remain dry. And build your house on stilts next time"

"You don't have a right to breathe on your property without the aid of an oxygen cylinder, you merely expected it"

I find your alternate view essentially flawed, in that it ignores the fact that the part of nature one makes use of for production is as much subject to damage by others as the end product of our productive efforts.

EDIT for spelling.

Edited February 13, 2007 by mrocktor

[Galileo Blogs]

If you think zoning is immoral, just try living next door to a noisy 24-hour tire repair shop with air guns and jackhammer noises going all day and night.

This is a strawman argument. The answer to this type of situation is that you take the offending party to court for violating your right to property. There are common-sense standards of what constitutes a tort that have been established over centuries. Clearly, one's property right is violated when noise beyond a certain level is created that interferes with my ability to use and enjoy my home.

Zoning these days is rarely used as some sort of grand protector of property rights. Rather, it is used frequently to violate the rights of property owners. For instance, suppose I live in a 20-story building and don't want my views of the Empire State Building blocked? I contribute some money to local councilmen who enact a new zoning law to "down-size" residential development in the area that could block my view. This happens every day in New York and clearly violates the rights of all property owners whose property is now worth less in the "down-zoned" area.

There are common-sense principles of torts that address all manner of offenses from neighbors against oneself, including situations like the one you describe where someone's septic tank pollutes the groundwater that you drink. The solution to the type of problem you cite is to be found in the courts. Using principles of common law (backed up by a rational philosophy), the courts decide if a violation of your rights has occurred and, if so, what the remedy will be.

Zoning laws only exist to violate the rights of property owners. They are abused everyday. They are not a solution to alleged or actual violations of your property rights. If they were the answer, then what you have is gang rule. My gang tries to enact zoning laws that benefit me, while your gang tries to enact zoning laws that benefit you. Objectivity and individual rights are not a consideration.

[DavidOdden]

I find your alternate view essentially flawed, in that it ignores the fact that the part of nature one makes use of for production is as much subject to damage by others as the end product of our productive efforts.

Equally, I find your alternative view of property rights to be fundamentally flawed (though your addition at the beginning of the post makes some important modifications that I'll get to below). Your view of property rights imposes indefinite, involuntary obligations on all men, who cannot possibly know what they are required to do to be moral and avoid violating the rights of others. This is, as we know, the fundamentally anti-life, anti-human philosophy of environmental radicalism (so therefore I urge you to rethink your position). If a man cannot piss on his property because the piss might get into his neighbor's ground water eventually, then his neighbor's "rights" restrict my actions -- it means that I do not have the right to act as I wish, on my property. A man also cannot cut down the trees on his property because in doing so, he may significantly affect the ground water of his neighbor. A man may not kill the wolves on his own property, because killing them may remove the predator that kept the deer under control, which unchecked destroy the crops on his neighbor's land (and after all, the neighbor only bought the land for the purpose of growing corn). Plus, of course, those wolf-corpses may contaminate your ground water. You are claiming the right to restrain my actions because they may have an affect on you that you don't like, something that works against your purpose. Where is the list of allowed and prohibited actions? How can man live by reason if he cannot know what actions will be legally allowed or disallowed?

What I am arguing is that denied the ability to act uppon nature, man cannot produce.

I agree here -- that's why I must be free to piss on my property, shoot the wolves, and cut down the trees. Or, build a 5-unit complex.

Or, more specifically, denied access to that part of nature he had harnessed, man cannot produce.

O-o-o-kay. Explain how groundwater is "harnessed". See, for example, Jennifer's comments in #5. Free-range water, whether it's underground or above ground, is unharnessed. Harness the stuff and you've got a case. If you can figure out how to harness air (actually not so hard to do, if you have a compressor), then it can be your property. Bottle the water or harness it in some manner, and it becomes property. Until you bag the game, or water, it is unharnessed and not property.

I like your harnessing insight, although it seems to me that it doesn't serve your position all that well.

[mrocktor]

Your view of property rights imposes indefinite, involuntary obligations on all men, who cannot possibly know what they are required to do to be moral and avoid violating the rights of others.

These obligations are of the negative sort - they are not required to do anything. They are required to refrain from action that will destroy another's property. You can know what is required of you just as you can know what is required of you to not violate the right to life life. If you can know that randomly shooting a gun in a shopping mall is a no-no, you can know that dumping nuclear waste beside someones house is a no-no too.

If you want to build a 5-unit complex you are free to do so. If you are smart, you will realize that the sewage from said complex may damage the property of people nearby - and you will install a system you believe to be sufficient to prevent this damage. If you are short sighted, you will damage their property and they can bring you to court - if they can build a case against you.

A man can piss on his property because he knows that much material, filtered though the soil, is irrelevant to the aquifer. His neighbor would have an impossible task at hand if he took it uppon him to show that one man pissing on the ground altered his water in any significant way. Same goes for cutting down trees. The neighbor would have to establish a causal link between the tree felling and the change in the water. And so on. The system is inherently fair, you are only at risk of being sued for objectively demonstrable effects of your actions on the property of others. No, you can't shift the onus of installing filtration to your neighbor if you decide to pour raw sewage into the underground water. And that is a good thing.

This is, as we know, the fundamentally anti-life, anti-human philosophy of environmental radicalism

I urge you to retract this statement. Objective claim on demonstrable damage of specific resources is not the anti-human philosophy of environmentalism. I have not claimed intrinsic value of nature as such - I am defending the value of some part of nature to a specific person who is using it for a specific purpose.

Explain how groundwater is "harnessed".

By digging a well and extracting the water.

I like your harnessing insight, although it seems to me that it doesn't serve your position all that well.

Harnessing a horse does not mean building a barrier all around it and isolating it from all possible interference - it is only putting on the horse such equipment as is necessary to make it useful. Likewise you dont need to build a wall around a lake to harness its water, you mere need to walk up to it with a bucket.

[IAmMetaphysical]

Likewise you dont need to build a wall around a lake to harness its water, you mere need to walk up to it with a bucket.

The point is that you haven't harnessed the LAKE, you've harnessed that bucket of water.

[mrocktor]

The point is that you haven't harnessed the LAKE, you've harnessed that bucket of water.

And I'm arguing that in doing so dayly you secure the right to continue to do so, or in other words that others cannot stop you from doing it by making the water unusable. If they do anything at all to the lake that does not affect your bucket-a-day, you have no claim on them.

[DavidOdden]

Likewise you dont need to build a wall around a lake to harness its water, you mere need to walk up to it with a bucket.

Likewise, you don't need to hunt all the game in Montana, you just have to hunt some of it. You don't have to actually get down to the oil, you just have to kick the dirt.

You need to decide whether you're going to argue from a "law as it is" perspective, or a "law as it should be" perspective. Under either version, you can't sue a man for building on his own property. Of course I'm assuming, as I thought you were, that a direct causal link can be established between an action an an effect, which is why there is absolutely no validity to Mark's use of government force to block capitalism. So to reiterate, if you can establish that your neighbor cutting down trees on his property caused some sad event to befall you, in terms of your hopes and dreams about your land, then under your version of rights, the guy gets to sue his neighbor. Because in your theory, you don't just acquire a right to the land when you acquire the land, you acquire a right of no-influence from things that naturally move from off of your property to onto your property (though as I understand it, this right is only there if it was somehow part of the ethico-epistemology of claiming or acquiring the land).

Your claim is based on the hidden wishes of a property owner, and how laws of nature combined with another man's actions might thwart those wishes -- that is what you wish to proscribe by law. You are claiming that when that happens, the thwarted man gets to sue the neighbor, because the neighbor has a responsibility to not cause any change in the environment of another man. This is the fundamental credo of evironmental radicalism: how is your philosophical system any different? You may not feel that you are an environmentalist, but I do not see what the philosophical difference is.

[IAmMetaphysical]

And I'm arguing that in doing so dayly you secure the right to continue to do so...

You have a right to the products you've made, not the products you plan to make, unless and until you make them. If you build a mine on a mountain it does not make all the gold in that mountain yours, it makes the mine yours and the gold you've been able to extract yours. You have no right to limit another person's productivity because you want the future guranteed for you.

[mweiss]

The problem I am seeing with the lack of prior restraint (zoning laws) is that with the system proposed here of letting an injured landowner sue the instigator is that the courts would be immediately clogged up with lawsuits. Everyone would be suing everyone else and instead of having settled law to act as a guideline to prevent this litigious situation from developing, we’d eventually end up with a mish-mach of case law in which party A sued party B for property trespass or damages, or however you consider it.

I think the problem with zoning is that it is indeed determined by the government and that special interest parties get preferential treatment. But the concept of zoning and planned communities is not a bad one—so long as it’s proposed before the first land buyer comes along. Instituting zoning on preexisting landowners would be immoral, because it would be tantamount to telling a landowner who’s understanding of his land use is “unlimited use” within reason, that he can not longer do certain established activities on his land. However, prospective buyers entering a community would be presented with something like a EULA for the land, and this could be produced by the developer of that community, a private entity, to which the buyer could agree and buy in, or decline and go elsewhere.

[DavidOdden]

However, prospective buyers entering a community would be presented with something like a EULA for the land, and this could be produced by the developer of that community, a private entity, to which the buyer could agree and buy in, or decline and go elsewhere.

This is the reason why I, for one, would be unwilling to impose any such restrictions on my property. I can't imagine buying property that has such conditions on it, and given a choice of a restricted plot vs. an unrestricted plot, the restrictions would push me in the direction of the unrestricted plot. If that hurts resale value by only 20%, with a $500,000 lot that is a big chunk of change.

But also, as far as your "proposed before the first land buyer comes along" condition goes, that would moot all such plans, since there's no more unowned land this side of Outer Mongolia.

[mrocktor]

Likewise, you don't need to hunt all the game in Montana, you just have to hunt some of it. You don't have to actually get down to the oil, you just have to kick the dirt.

Did you not understand that the extent of your right is the extent of your usage? Hunt some of it and you have a right not to have that "some of it" interfered with (and, as you can see by consulting my previous example of the caveman hunter - you can claim the land as your own). Of course hunting on previously owned land won't gain you a claim on the porperty of others.

You need to decide whether you're going to argue from a "law as it is" perspective, or a "law as it should be" perspective.

I have been arguing the second from the beginning, for the simple reason that I am not a law student and don't know "law as it is".

Under either version, you can't sue a man for building on his own property.

You should. For instance, if he builds a giand concave mirror on his property that happens to focus the noon sun on his neighbor's house - he should be sued for burning down his neighbor's house.

if you can establish that your neighbor cutting down trees on his property caused some sad event to befall you, in terms of your hopes and dreams about your land, then under your version of rights, the guy gets to sue his neighbor.

Not some sad event. Measurable disruption of the characteristics of your property that impacts your established usage of it. Not "I wanted to build a stadium on that unnocupied stretch of property you flooded", not "I wanted to dig a well there some day but you dumped cyanide in the ground water" - "you flooded my garden", "you tainted my well".

Because in your theory, you don't just acquire a right to the land when you acquire the land, you acquire a right of no-influence from things that naturally move from off of your property to onto your property (though as I understand it, this right is only there if it was somehow part of the ethico-epistemology of claiming or acquiring the land).

You aquire a right to the property AS aquired, whether by claim or purchase. Buy a house beside a coal power plant, you can't complain about soot. Coal powerplant built beside your house - you can.

Your claim is based on the hidden wishes of a property owner, and how laws of nature combined with another man's actions might thwart those wishes -- that is what you wish to proscribe by law.

Wrong. This is complete straw man. Not wishes - established usage. And the "laws of nature combined with another man's actions" is just a fancy way to say "the consequences of a man's actions". Yes, I hold a man responsible for the results of his actions.

This is the fundamental credo of evironmental radicalism

No, the fundamental credo of enviromnetal radicalism is that nature has intrinsic value. Mine is quite different. And I would be deeply offended by the association, though I am extending the benefit of the doubt for the moment and assuming you are just not understanding what I'm trying to explain.

[mrocktor]

You have a right to the products you've made, not the products you plan to make, unless and until you make them. If you build a mine on a mountain it does not make all the gold in that mountain yours, it makes the mine yours and the gold you've been able to extract yours. You have no right to limit another person's productivity because you want the future guranteed for you.

If you find a gold vein and build a mine, you most certainly have a right to the whole of that deposit. A deposit you found. If a huge mining company hears about your discovery and strip mines the deposit from the other side, a crime has been commited.

[IAmMetaphysical]

Agree to disagree, later.

[mrocktor]

Agree to disagree, later.

I can't force you to discuss it, but your insight and argument has cleared up a lot for me on other topics. Sad to see you go.

[mweiss]

I attended the town hearing earlier this evening and turnout of residents was on the low side. Just myself and four other parties.

As I expected, the builder addressed all the "health & safety" issues.

I heard some "uh-oh" type murmering coming from the builder's side of the room when I spoke about the implied contract between the town and the residents, which was interesting. I also brought up the historic case of Qualitron, which I successfully prevented from building a factory smack in the middle of exclusive Stony Hill section of Bethel, 42 years ago. And I mentioned the historic trends in well water quality going downhill as a subdivision was built on the other side, east of me. I was able to get all my objections voiced.

However, I think we have little chance of stopping this development, because of CT Statute 8-30, which allows ALL of the lots in an "affordable" subdivision--not just the affordable lots--to fall short of complying with zoning minimum acreage requirements.

I pointed out that if we are to allow this developer to do this, then by all rights. the residents can't be stopped from dividing up THEIR lots and doing the same thing. And one of the town council members responded that this is true, and allowed under the law. And so, in a space where 5 homes may today sit, possibly 25 or more homes could end up sitting.

Unfortunately, our expert witness, a civil engineer and my neighbor, was ill, the result of shoveling 11' of snow off the roof of his restaurant in Oswego County earlier in the week. But he called me a couple hours before the hearing and related the major points and I and another resident conveyed those points at the hearing.

It was an interesting discourse. The builder defended his position, stating that the property they had taken over was a hazard to persons in that it had two mobile homes on it that were filled to the top with refuse, 150 tires scattered all over the land, a failed septic system and other hazards. The house itself was run-down and had cardboard sheets in the windows. He stated that it was inconceivable how anyone could live under those conditions (silently, to myself, I grinned, because I too, had lived under similar conditions for some time).

So in the final analysis, the builder would be improving the property. So it's a matter of what sort of residents move into that subdivision that will affect the quality of life for the surrounding landowners. Ultimately, the neighbors nearest this development will have to take the state to court, as the state law overrules the town zoning on this matter.

[Galileo Blogs]

I also brought up the historic case of Qualitron, which I successfully prevented from building a factory smack in the middle of exclusive Stony Hill section of Bethel, 42 years ago.

//

So it's a matter of what sort of residents move into that subdivision that will affect the quality of life for the surrounding landowners. Ultimately, the neighbors nearest this development will have to take the state to court, as the state law overrules the town zoning on this matter.

Well, let's leave the discussion of property rights out of this topic. As your statements make clear, the true objective of zoning laws is to keep the "riff-raff" out.

[Inspector]

It was an interesting discourse. The builder defended his position, stating that the property they had taken over was a hazard to persons in that it had two mobile homes on it that were filled to the top with refuse, 150 tires scattered all over the land, a failed septic system and other hazards. The house itself was run-down and had cardboard sheets in the windows. He stated that it was inconceivable how anyone could live under those conditions (silently, to myself, I grinned, because I too, had lived under similar conditions for some time).

Maybe you could find a buyer for your property, after all.......