This commentary is by Paul Hannan, a land surveyor and farmer who lives in South Calais. He was commissioner of forests, parks and recreation during the Kunin administration and was director of conservation programs for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board for nine years.
In 1999, when Barry Singer clear-cut everything between his newly constructed dwelling and the waters of Green River Reservoir — including the state-owned shoreline — to enhance the view and to make launching his rowing scull a bit easier, I was infuriated. When the state “threw the book at him” and made him pay substantial fines and remediation I was delighted. Justice was served.
When Paul Poulin and Alan Ritter decided in 2007 to enhance their backcountry skiing experience on Big Jay by clandestinely and knowingly cutting over 800 trees in a swath 60 feet wide at least 2,000 feet long on the back side of Jay Peak, I again rejoiced as they were sentenced to one to three years on probation and 60 days of community service work.
So why, you might ask, when I read VTDigger’s account of Thomas Tremonte getting fined $75,000 for cutting 839 “trees” in Hazen’s Notch State Park, did I just roll my eyes and think: What a colossal miscarriage of justice and waste of taxpayer dollars!
In each of these three cases, I had a direct personal involvement that gave me more than the typical public’s-eye-view of the situation. The first two transgressions were committed on lands protected in part by funds from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board during my years there as director of conservation programs. I knew those properties intimately and saw firsthand just how egregious the cutting was.
In Tommy Tremonte’s case, I was hired as an expert witness — I’ve been a Vermont licensed land surveyor for over 40 years — to help evaluate the boundary line in the alleged cut area and to critique the state’s methodology in performing its “inventory” of cut stumps.
So let’s put that inventory in perspective. The Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation sent five employees up into the area where Tommy admitted doing some cutting. As of the inventory date — July 8, 2019 — there were absolutely no reliable marks indicating where the boundary of Tommy’s land ended and the state’s began. In all likelihood, the last time that line was blazed was in the 1960s.
Above and below the cut area were some visible paint marks, but within the notably steep cut section, virtually no marks existed. Thus, when the state did its stump tally, it could not possibly have known whose land the stumps were on — none of the five Forests, Parks and Recreation employees were qualified to determine boundary lines. For that matter, neither could Tommy have been expected to know for certain where the boundary was. A proper survey of the line was not conducted until two years after the inventory and, as of the date Tommy settled with the state, the line still had not been marked.
None of the documents provided to Tommy in the discovery phase of his trial described the tally methodology in any detail, other than to say that the five employees fanned out and counted stumps. Stumps were not marked, as is customary in a trespass stump tally, so double-counting was almost a certainty. Furthermore, the inventory made no differentiation as to species or whether the cut stem was alive or dead before cutting.
Not marking the stumps and not having the boundary marked made verifying the state’s inventory by Tommy’s experts impossible.
But all that process stuff aside, you may wonder why I consistently put the word “trees” in quotes. Well, it turns out that the inventory broke the stumps into size categories ranging from shrubs to 22 inches-plus. Of the 839 stems tallied by Forests, Parks and Recreation, 358 of them were shrubs, likely about the size of your finger. In the under-6-inch category were another 453 stems. In other words, what someone without an ax to grind (pardon the pun) might more accurately describe as a bush or a sapling, the state chooses to call “trees” — I guess it plays better in the story lede. The lone 22-inch tree in the tally — for which a value of $2,000 was assigned — was actually dead before it was cut and was so far to the west in the ambiguous cut area as to be clearly on Tommy’s land.
Maybe because there hadn’t been a splashy message sent about cutting on state land in over 15 years, it was time to nail someone. But Tommy should not have risen to poster child status.
The scar on Big Jay is still a glaring reminder of Poulin and Ritter’s flagrant disregard for the public’s resources. Barry Singer’s cleared swath is still visible to Green River Reservoir paddlers over 20 years after the crime.
But when I visited the Hazen’s Notch site barely three years after the activity, new vegetation had all but obliterated any evidence of cutting. Singer, Poulin and Ritter knew exactly whose land they were cutting on. Tommy’s was an honest mistake with absolutely no lasting impact.
By the way, Ondine — Barry Singer’s “Estate Home” — can be yours for a mere $3.25 million, with “unobstructed views of the lake and the mountains beyond ….”
