If you wouldn’t even pay for it yourself, as pretty much the sole beneficiary and someone who could afford it but would rather the money go elsewhere, why would it make sense for other taxpayers to pay for it?
Isn’t the premise of “you may as well own that land” the entire appeal of living next to public land anyway?
My default presumption, without checking with them directly, is not only that it would not be allowed, but that this is also very much not a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" situation either. Even just asking the question can draw attention from them you may not want.
The ready accessibility of the land is advantageous in some ways, but as neighbors the state can be quite nasty. Your other neighbors don't tend to have anywhere near the regulatory firepower to make sure you comply with what they want.
Unless negligence is involve (like an arborist being hired to condemn a tree), they’re generally considered and act of god. They’re the responsibility of the property they fall onto.
So, in the case of OP, the situation is unfortunate, but it’s on him to maintain his properties and his fence lines within his properties. It’s convenient the state has a fence along part of his property, but it’s not their responsibility to fix it for adjacent lots.
Practically you’re right of course, but they are probably technically responsible given the circumstances the poster laid out.
It would boil down to their degree of plausible deniability, ‘state priviledge’, and the specifics of the law and precedent in their state of course.
Good luck
How that works out in practice is basically you as the owner of the tree have to document it's healthy each year. Then, if it falls and you can prove it was healthy you're fine. Hopefully neighbors insurance pays. If you didn't document the health of the tree, your neighbor can press charges and you (or your insurance) have to pay.
I think I unintentionally brought Tree Law to HN.
Now that I think of this may be the first time that I've seen Tree Law on here.
We're only a hop, skip and a jump from getting some vigorous discussion about Bay area Tree Law now.
What they are noting is the State is it’s own beast, and good luck getting it to do what you want.
This also is not a city type situation, where the density and value of something makes certain types of situations play out differently.
In the city, if a neighbor’s diseased tree falls on your house, you might have a legitimate legal claim, depending on the circumstances.
Your homeowners insurance will figure that out.
If one of the million random trees on state property falls on your fence? It doesn’t much matter what the law says, good luck.
Depending on the size of the tree and your home you might have enough to sell to the neighbors too.
I'm assuming the state doesn't come around asking for payment for their fallen trees.
Trying to maintain the state’s fence is not a good idea.
You would build your own fence on your side of the property set back by a couple feet.
Oh, the joys of living in a place with actual rule of law.
Here in my 3rd world country, people are free to annex land demarcated for streets that adjoin their property, without any real consequences, as long as it is not meant to be a major street.
Which is hardly the end of the world, but it can definitely grind the gears to be spending thousands when you could fix the problem for several hundreds, if not perhaps several tens, of dollars if they wouldn't be assholes about it. But I would absolutely advise anyone in that situation to spend the thousands and not bank on the state not being assholes about it.
I can also add that you can't even be sure that if you got away with it for years that you will continue to get away with it. The particular issue that my father got into a bit of hassle with the state about is that he accidentally put a pole barn across the state line. Didn't mean to, but he misread the survey markers. Fortunately, they let him remediate it at his expense without pursuing the matter any further legally... but it means they did, after several years of it being there, come through a with a survey team and verify that nobody on the border was crossing into their land, and anything they found they made the residents fix no matter how many years the deviation had been there. All the laws about such thing between two citizens mean nothing to the state.
These properties only border public land on one side.
If someone is trying to fence their dogs into their property, it’s implied that they’re already fencing every other part of the property. They would be completing it with a back section.
Oh no. Tbe preposterous idea of putting a fence around your own property.
A sibling comment pointed this out, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105376
Like my neighbors have a fence, I have a fence, there is like a 1' alley in between them, everything is on the respective owner's land, and that would definitely work even if your neighbor is the government.
If fence integrity is important, you need your own fence. Otherwise your fence is as good as your least interested neighbor.
It worked.
For some reason every bureaucracy is a host to a type of person that will go very far to make sure everything is in accordance with rules. If you draw attention to yourself they might want to check some ridiculous things that no sane person would ever actually pay attention to.
These are the ambitious bureaucrats and are probably the worst scum on earth. If you watched Andor you know who I am talking about. Not the lady but that security guy. This is the exact type.
Sure, most times you will not meet them but some totally amazing people.
But it’s enough to meet them once and your life could be ruined forever.
The power asymmetry is too strong to risk it.
I would rather act as if I was an outlaw and a guilty criminal with my dealings with government. Guilty, on all accounts. Now.. how to avoid the punishment?
That’s how we think about the government in Eastern Europe culturally. Whether that’s exotic or relatable to you as American, that will be interesting.
It is common in parts of the US for government land to be illegally maintained by locals at their own expense because the government fails to do so. The impacted people aren't left with many other choices. There is little recourse when the government claims sole authority but also neglects its responsibilities under that authority.
This has been an issue in land management for as long as I've been alive. It sort of works to the extent the government is oddly incurious about someone else illegally doing their job for them. But every so often a bureaucrat with idle hands will decide to make an example of someone for illegal maintenance without addressing the underlying problem.
Which is a fine option, but it should be something agreed to by both parties. You can't just hand over a cost like that, and if you buy property with some kind of agreement this choice is baked into the original price. It makes perfect sense for the government to uphold agreements it has made.
Secondly - if they did own the fence line, it'd be on the government to come and fix it when one of their trees breaks it, surely?
The key question is what is actually in the agreement. 'The state will maintain the fence' doesn't indicate the level of maintenance or the timeliness of said maintenance, it just means the neighbor isn't allowed to do it.
> Secondly - if they did own the fence line, it'd be on the government to come and fix it when one of their trees breaks it, surely?
From discussions I've seen, generally there's no legal responsibility for tree falls, unless there's neglegence like ignoring a clearly failing tree. But leaving a forest to do whatever the forest wants doesn't feel like neglegence.
There is no agreement whatsoever, that's the point. No agreement was made or mentioned. The mere existence of a fence on government property does not constitute an agreement to maintain said fence.
We're on the same page.
Can you imagine the sneering and hand wringing that would ensue in the comments if you tried to make such an argument about private property?
If a private landowner failed to maintain anything that was created by man (as opposed to nature) they'd say things like "public nuisance", "blighted", "antisocial" and all the other buzzword people of that bent love to use.
I don't really care what the standard is. If some standard is good enough to be worth legislating enforcing then it ought to apply equally to all land owners regardless of public or private.
Anyway tree law is super, super well-established and it works the same way for private parties. Your neighbor's trees are none of your business until they are on your property, and then they're exclusively your business (except you can't structurally damage or kill the tree e.g. by cutting roots that cross onto your property).
You clearly have some strange bone to pick. You should pick it elsewhere.
If you start actively managing it (removing invasive species, dead trees etc.) the state can take a more active interest at any time and sue/fine you into oblivion.
Or a serious pest issue (someone mentioned ticks, for instance).
Pros and cons of the situation, for sure.
Most people don't actually want to be at the edge of raw nature.
If that bothers you, don’t buy property adjacent to 200ft tall trees. They will fall. That’s what trees do. They grow, then die and fall over.
It feels like the top commenter is simply sharing personal insight, not recriminating and pleading woe, so Idk why these responses act like they're being egregious. The situation simply requires cooperation with a government that apparently is loathe to go through the process with.
And if it’s your fence you can build one of the ones that’s cheap and easy to replace. I wouldn’t be shocked if you could put chain link back up after some straightening. You could use the downed tree to fix the fence if it was split log (not so good at keeping dogs in though)
Honestly i do not know the full scope of this one, but if there's one thing I've learnt from observing her work over the last decade...it's humans need to stop adding chemicals to water bodies with the goal of thinking they're helping something.
I can imagine her having some long explanation about the unknown risks of man spreading this substance, even if its not a chemical agent. I lean on the edge of listening to Grandpa Simpson on these kind of things: https://i.imgur.com/MdjduDH.png
It is not meaningful to allow every conceivable unknown unknown (to channel Rumsfeld) suck out any sense of agency.
It might well be safe, but the question is what are the downstream affects of reducing the population of mosquitos (or other bugs in the water that this substance impacts). Maybe they've exclusively positive, but I assure you determining that is no walk in the park.
I don't know, what are the possible effects of antibiotics? What are the possible effects of uprooting weeds, which some organisms may depend on? What are the possible harmful effects of putting out wildfires?
For every action that someone might think of as beneficial, there are all sorts of "harmful" effects that can be posited. In the examples above, these harms are not even just theoretical, and yet people do not constantly wring their hands worrying about wildfire fighting, weed control, or the proper use of antibiotics.
That this seems to happen only with mosquitoes seems quite weird to me, especially when it occurs even with efforts to reduce mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases. People are oddly very worried about some nebulous harm caused by reducing real and serious harm now.
Wildfire - controlled wildfires are actually beneficial to prevent the real bad ones and help refertilize. So they now let them burn down if possible and just control the edges where necessary.
Weed control - poisoned groundwater from herbicides/pesticides is a huge headache, so these are tightly regulated on substances and amounts.
Antibiotics - multiresistant bacteria have taken over since years. In turn, antibiotics are now prescribed more rarely and for longer periods (to make it resistant survivors less likely) and new antibiotics had to be developed.
"Mosquito dunks linked to declining bear population - farmers struggling with deer populations"
Agreed. I'm in South Texas where we have Aedes mosquitoes that are an invasive species and spread Malaria, Dengue, Zika, and other infections which kill people. I consider disrupting their lifecycle to be an unvarnished good. I carry mosquito dunks in my pocket when I go on walks and toss them into any puddles, drains, storm sewers, and ponds I encounter, and it seems to have helped a lot anecdotally. I care a lot about nature/ecology, but also fuck mosquitoes.
Also massively illegal if you live anywhere that has a state level wetlands protection type law and the enforcement authority decides to exercise their discretion to make your life hell. They typically claim jurisdiction and authority over all activity in/around wetlands so theoretically you should be getting a state permit before digging a mailbox post hole or doing any sort of "management" of plants/animals but most of the time they just turn a blind eye to private homeowners who are being reasonable.
Wetlands laws and rules (non-criminal code generally, but wetlands are some of the worst) are written in a way to make RICO look like a meticulously scoped out piece of technical legislation.
Second, most states that regulate wetlands beyond the federal minimum adopt some sort of absurd expansive standard far above what the feds want. It's complex and varies by state. Sometimes there's a square footage minimum, sometimes there isn't. There's also "gotchas" where manmade areas can become wetlands if they are let to be that way too long, so like farmer Johnson can absolutely get screwed by his grandfather's bright idea to make all the drainage converge in one spot 40yr ago. Sometimes there are exemptions, sometimes not. There's huge variation by state and some states allow local governments to enforce rules above and beyond the state ones.
But yeah I don't mess with wetlands.
When your neighbour isn't as invested as you in maintaining the border or has other annoyances you are better off leaving some buffer zone that allows to isolate yourself from the border and whatever road, river, canal, forest or loud or busy place is at the other side.
Is it the physical blockade that the fence provides or just "where is the boundary?" - my guess is that it's both. While physical fence is hard to sustain due to trees falling but could there be an electronic solution for keeping the boundary line intact by putting some sort of gadgets underground which you can always ping to see where is the boundary?
In what state? Last I knew, the State Parks in most US states were miserably underfunded - so quick fixes (for pretty much anything, not just fences) just ain't gonna happen.
And what's the legal status of the fallen trees? In a fair number of places a 200' tree, already down, might be kinda valuable.