Never A Dull Moment

Things are busy around the homestead! They have been working on a highway improvement for over a year and it will go on for maybe another year. I am reminded of it every morning at 6:30 or 7:00 when the equipment gets started up and moved into position. The house shakes so badly it is impossible to keep pictures hanging straight and the dust is ridiculous! Norma would be crapping herself but luckily my standards are not so high!

Part of the project was to re-run all utilities, water, sewer, power, cable, telephone and a new storm sewer. I put a lot of water into the storm sewer from the two year round streams coming down the bank behind the house. These streams used to go into a pipe, under the highway and into the ocean. That is no longer considered politically correct so hence the new storm sewer which will probably collect runoff from all the properties and THEN dump it into the ocean.

The other day they were going to connect my bank drain pipe to the storm sewer when I got a knock on the door. A worker in a white hardhat asked me to walk down to the highway with him. He told me they had trouble locating my pipe and finally found it but it is buried under my neighbours property by a few inches and not mine! Well, if it is it is not my problem as I didn't do it and they have assured everyone many times that the project will not cost any homeowner anything. They talked to the City Manager and the Legal Department and concluded they couldn't connect me to the storm drain as long as I was trespassing on the neighbour's property. I told them to just leave me draining into the ocean, I was happy with that. Well, they finally decided they were going to give me a whole new pipe buried under my 100 foot driveway and connect to the pipe where it actually is on my property. Again he told me there would be no cost, don't worry. They found the old drain pipe under the top corner of my driveway and started digging. They removed all of the 40 or 50 year old pavement off the 100 by 16 foot driveway. dug a trench, placed and connected the new pipe. It works! The nice, clean, fresh stream water no longer goes into the ocean.

The white hat then told me that they were filling in the trench but were holding off on resurfacing the driveway for two weeks to a month until the power, cable and telephone lines were buried. No problem with me as long as it eventually gets done. He said if it rains and becomes muddy and unusable to let them know and they will spread a load of crush on it. Then he asked me exactly where my property line was and I told him, "Down at the highway, I own the driveway". He gave me a shocked look and said his drawings showed the driveway as belonging to the city. Well, my drawings and property survey show it belonging to me and I have the drawings from when we purchased the house in 1989. He told me he had to make another call and never came back so I trust it is resolved because I want the driveway paved and restored to the condition it was in when they started messing with it and I want them to honour their promise that it would cost me nothing.