BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Seventy-mile-per-hour winds ripped through Vermont in early January during a storm that closed roads, uprooted solar arrays, and left thousands of people without power.
In Burlington’s Kieslich Park, tree trunks splintered; fallen timber blocked a footpath and crushed a chain-link fence that separates the wooded tract from Cambrian Rise, a sprawling private development on North Avenue. Workers for S.D. Ireland, a concrete company building luxury condos on the property, cut back the branches that breached their property line — then, without asking permission, crossed onto city land and strip-cut three swaths of trees, uprooting many of them. Some of the trees were more than 100 feet from the Cambrian Rise property line. S.D. Ireland says it did the work as a favor, but city officials say the company scarred the land, which is conserved.
Darren Perron spoke with Seven Days’ Courtney Lamdin, who reported on the story for this week’s issue.