Mayor mows farmer's newly planted orchard adjacent to his house, farmer makes it a wetland instead: 'It's huge, it's beautiful, it's wet'

If you live adjacent to an upstart public official, there's a good chance you're going to run into problems, especially when they believe in loose applications of the rules when it benefits them—despite their otherwise pedantic outlook on regulations. Of course, you're going to run into even more problems when you're managing your agriculturally zoned land in unconventional ways, turning to relatively newfound ecological means of managing pests rather than dumping hundreds of gallons of pesticides on the property to keep pests at bay.

This mayor overstepped when he ordered the city maintenance crew to come and mow this agricultural plot after determining that the grass was too long. Unfortunately, that "long grass" was actually a meticulously planned prairie ecosystem that had been constructed to support a newly planted orchard of trees. Without even giving the land managers or owners notice, the city mowers came through and laid waste to the entire thing, mowing down everything that had been planted: grass, trees, and anything else that lay in their path. (Someone get the tree lawyers involved.) Instead of trying to replant and start from scratch, the staff biologist responsible for the project changed tactics and converted the land directly adjacent to the mayor's house into a wetland.

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Posted by Brad Dickson