Great points you make there!
The zoning board told the neighbor who was fighting us building our house ‘if you want to control the land next door then buy the land next door’.
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Indeed, in my area they only have to put a notice on the bulletin board in the town hall building, and a notice in the newspaper [that no one buys cause it sux] That’s how my area ended up with a fracked Gas power plant, the initial notices about it almost 10 years ago went to a total of 500 local people… the plume from their test run the other week reached a city about 30 minutes away on the highway, and all those homes in between. 
Learn everything you can about your towns zoning, and the various ways this could effect the community, as someone mentioned, including well water, runoff, roads and traffic… maybe contact your DEC to see if there are any concerns there… leave no stone unturned
Same here.
It does happen to those of us who buy more land. I own 69 acres and it could happen right here. My 80 year old next door neighbor, who has never lived anywhere else in his entire life, owns about 400 acres, and it will happen to him too if it happens me. We purposely researched and moved to a very rural county to avoid it, but you cannot avoid it.
We have lived through this before as we were residents of the Northeast. We saw what happened there when counties were not equipped to deal with such large amounts of development. That was the main reason we left.
The biggest thing being built in our area are 55+ communities and assisted living/personal care facilities.
where I live the city had to put a moratorium on assisted care/retirement housing (unless personal)… our EMS unit which is city owned makes a bout one zillion response calls to multiple assisted care facilities in the city
A side note was and is the people there are residents of the city… with voting rights… their votes are harvested by those wishing to push an agenda … has been an ongoing problem… it has pitted the people living regular old houses verses those in the retirement centers …
Second the green screen.
Here’s a COTH thread with a lot of info on different trees!
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When you say “It happens”, I assume you mean develoment? Well yes of course development can happen anywhere. What I’m saying is that with 69, or 400 acres, you presumably have enough spatial cushion that you’re not forced into daily conflict with the people around you, like having your horses spook because your riding arena is right on the property line. I just don’t get the thought process that says that in that situation, the neighbor is the problem. If controling what happens around me while I ride is very important to me, then I’m crazy to put my riding arena in a place where I have no control over what happens right next to it. (And by extension, crazy to buy land that gives me no choice about where to put it.) Those were choices. They may feel like forced choices, but they’re not.
Our county has a GREAT handout it gives to people who want a building permit in unincorporated areas of the county. It is quite blunt and basically says: Farms smell and they can be noisy. They generate dust and spray chemicals you may find objectionable. But they’re important to the county, so just get over it. And the road will not get plowed in time for you to get to work in the morning. Plan accordingly. The “country view” you have outside your window right now may very well change based on how your neighbor uses his/her land, or a new road the county decides to put in. If you build here, you are choosing to accept all of this. If not, stay in town.
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Congratulations, you just got a lot richer. An apartment building going in next to you, wow . I know you hate to move but most importantly realize your current lifestyle is toast however the value of your property has greatly increased and you may even be able to sell it to the developer of the land next to you.
I am now going through this for the second time, the first time was very painful but i learned a lot .
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My farm backs up to a subdivision. The first lots that sold were the ones that abutted my pasture. The neighbors that bought WANTED to see the horses out their windows. That was almost fifteen years ago. I have not had any problems whatsoever with the subdivision residents.
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Well yes and no.
In my area there are lots of small towns that have their own zoning… and that zoning varies widely.
In one town they refused to let a local merchant- with a store that locals clambered for her to save when it was changing hands… - offer antiques.
Why? I have no idea.
Another one they refused is an autobody shop owned by a lifelong resident that would like to expand some. He has been denied the approvals to add a couple garage bays taking it from 4 to 6 bays. That same land they allowed, however, the stinkin’ fracked gas power plant to go in on.
Go figure
You have to wonder what the problem is with an antiques section being added to an existing store… or 2 additional bays on an autobody shop where you then allowed a fracked gas plant.
My town, near the one above, refuses to allow development of the town center… a 4 corners with one flashing red/yellow light, a house on one corner, a deli with a horribly too small parking lot that is a hazard wrt that stop light, on another, and two other vacant, unmaintained corners littered with dumped garbage.
/sarcasm/ I can TOTALLY see why they would not want a storage business on one corner with all that wonderfulness and charm it would ruin /sarcasm/
At a recent town meeting about one resident who is getting paid to allow construction debris to be dumped on his property, causing concerns of neighbors who have wells so they worry what’s in that construction debris and how one can be sure what’s supposed to not be in there isn’t…, and also worry about the number of large, overweight trucks on their road [more than 30 a week]… are being patted on the head from the town board.
This town has no weight limits on ANY roads so when the dump trucks see the DEC they radio their buddies who are on the way up to take alternate routes… and they can because there are not weight limits on the roads. So now I am being effected cause those trucks are using alternate routes- ie roads I travel, they are unfamiliar with, driving large, overweight*** trucks on them.
The guy is making about $4500/load. No oversight as to what is on those trucks, the DEC is, under duress, doing spot checks… so if they catch one out of every 12 trucks with dirty loads… is that supposed to be ok? And who gets to decide what ‘ok’ even is? It should be the residents, the taxpayers.
How is that construction debris dumping not a business? But he has no permits, no business, no oversight, and the town shrugs it’s shoulders. It’s allowed. And he’s making about $7M a year while making his neighbors miserable, worried about the safety of their water their lil cul de sac, and pretty sure their homes are worth zilch now.
*** the state cops DOT div. stopped 5 of these trucks. They all got impounded for safety violations including being over weight. So we’re not talking about companies who care about the rules… They also have so many trucks and so much debris that when they got taken off the road by the state cops they radio’d to the city for a cab to come get them so they could hurry back in the next truck to make it to the dump site.
So yeah, development can happen,… but development can be stopped too… and the direction that your community, your town, your area takes should be something the community can effect and drives.
Otherwise, we could all end up living next to dumping grounds and power plants.
My personal guess is that when strange zoning refusals happen, that there is a competing business, or else the people on the board have some ax to grind with the person who wants the variance. The reason the fracking fiasco was approved, is pockets were greased, and further payments happen, or there is a huge financial bonus for someone who is selling the land, or other financial reasons. It almost always comes down to money.
When I lived in Colorado, when former farm land was developed, the new residents had to pay big tax bills for many years to expand the infrastructure that had to be constructed, and for the schools.
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@Angela Freda Sounds like a pretty terrible place to live. Maybe that dump site guy is mobbed up. If town governance is that corrupt / incompetent, why not rally people to vote the incompetents out. If the people being governed like this are ok with this status quo, then vote with your feet and live somewhere that makes you happier. Where/how you live is a choice and you can choose a different path. I know it may not feel like it sometimes.
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That’s the problem, most in this area do not have a problem with it all. They figure if their pal Bubba, who they sat next to in 6th grade, on the town board is ok with it, it must be ok! We are/have been trying to rally people to run and vote for a new guard, alas those who are interested in status quo, cause they chose to move/build here hear all the time 'You’re a carpetbagger, I’ve lived her ALL my life…" as a response to concerns about health and safety issues.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, and I certainly didn’t mean to give the impression we’re not trying… my point is that while trying, things can get really craptastic.
Mobbed up? I imagine so.
As for voting with my feet… my house is my biggest investment. I can not presently afford to take the financial loss that ‘just move’ would incur- do you want to buy a house near a fracked gas plant, along the pipeline bringing the gas to the plant, near the compressor station?. How about on a nice cul de sac with 30+ trucks a day hauling multi ton loads of potentially hazardous materials to dump uphill from your well?
I’m fairly sure many can’t take the financial loss ‘just move’ involves. I’m not sure we should have to. And moving doesn’t mean where you relocate to won’t go down the same path. As you said ‘development happens’.
I think the same goes for the OP. Clearly she bought where ‘small’/personal farms are welcome. It’s a rare area that small farms sit next to apartment buildings, ie that they share the same zoning [at least where I am]. I don’t think it’s an overreaction to think that when you buy acreage in the country for a personal farm, you are less likely to have to deal with high density housing.
I think the thing I am maddest about is that the people who sold their family farms for this plant and compressor station sold that land for peanuts.
The gas plant is a $900M project/business.
They got the 120+ acres to build it on for $2M.
If they had walked away with tens of millions… and needed the $$ cause their mom was needing cancer treatments or something… I could almost understand that.
To know that the neighbors who tout being lifelong residents who love this farming community more than I - an interloper- do, sold that farm land for peanuts to this abomination is maddening.
But you are right, palms were greased [there’s a trial of one of the Gov.s staff wrt this ongoing right now]… and those palms include local ones as well.
People I see at town board meetings, who I see locally, and daily.
Where I went to college there was a school farm, and an equestrian team, and you could take riding for PE. After I graduated, the school farm was sold, and supposedly financed the land purchase for the college basketball team arena, including tons of seating, etc. By an odd coincidence, the school president, former governor (he was local too), and other big wigs just happened to have purchased the land the arena was built on, right before the sale. So they destroyed the school farm, and riding program, and made a bundle.
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$2 M is far from peanuts for 120 acres around here. $16.6 k per acre would be a good price for 120 acres. I’d like that price for my land.
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my last Local hay supply … their “signing bonus” for natural gas drilling rights was just under $10 million dollars …$15k per acre… others got as much as $25k per acre…that was for the right to extract the gas not buy the land
Not if it was senior community 
Usually those come with a very tall stone wall or chain link fencing and the people tend to be quiet.
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Exactly, plus this ain’t North Carolina. 
Land here is not cheap.
The company, Millenium needed this land in this particular area because it was where the gas pipeline was only a few miles away [ie only a short extension need to be put in], and where the hookups were already existing for the power lines, and the compressor station was already in [notice this was done via segmentation…] and another local town was willing to sell them grey water for the cooling.
It was a tri-fecta.
Could they have gone elsewhere? Sure. But it would have cost them in terms of all that infrastructure, and if they were able to find a town with a board of rubes who were willing to bend the zoning regulations, ignore the lack of a fire department, and roll over so easily to allow it…
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[QUOTE=HungarianHippo;n10019040
Our county has a GREAT handout it gives to people who want a building permit in unincorporated areas of the county. It is quite blunt and basically says: Farms smell and they can be noisy. They generate dust and spray chemicals you may find objectionable. But they’re important to the county, so just get over it. And the road will not get plowed in time for you to get to work in the morning. Plan accordingly. The “country view” you have outside your window right now may very well change based on how your neighbor uses his/her land, or a new road the county decides to put in. If you build here, you are choosing to accept all of this. If not, stay in town.[/QUOTE]
God Bless Iowa! I am from Story County, and, as a child, I used to get to ride on my Grandfather’s fuel oil delivery truck, and visit the farms. Yep! They smell like farms :lol:
Where abouts in Iowa are you located HH?
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