Editor, Gazette-Journal:

In spite of Lewie Lawrence’s obsession about proving state roadside ditches aren’t VDOT’s responsibility, they exist to drain state roads and are part of the commonwealth’s infrastructure. Even VDOT doesn’t deny that.

Lewie Lawrence, Executive Director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission, is still wasting grant money trying to prove that failing state roadside ditches are the responsibility of the property owners whose lands they cross. In the November MPPDC minutes, he is reported as saying, “The goal is to collect all public records for future use to help understand who owns every inch of the drainage system and who should be responsible for the maintenance of the roadside ditch on the property. MPPDC staff will organize the data to fit into a database.”

Lawrence doesn’t confine his ditch obsession to the roadside. He sent a contract to Draper Aden Associates to create maps identifying ditches in “designated targeted areas … using Mathews County tax parcel maps overlapped with aerial imagery to provide information on ditch and channel location.” VDOT ditches are rarely indicated on our tax maps, and in forested areas, outfall ditches and streams are not always visible under the tree canopy.

VDOT easements are not shown on county tax parcels, only on roads plans, in deeds or in the original consent of landowners in the Board of Supervisors’ minutes. And then there are the early “no plan” roads where only a rough hand-drawn survey sketch in the county or state plat books outlines the location of the road—with no details on pipe or ditch locations. People at that time understood that roadside ditches drained the state roads and were connected to outfalls or streams to take the water away from the roads. Sad that so much money is being wasted now to prove what used to be common knowledge.

When I wrote “Drowning A County,” I gave specific examples about outfall easements and use of streams that didn’t require easements and how roadside ditches are carried as infrastructure on the commonwealth’s financial records. I thought MPPDC would act on that. They haven’t. I’ll let them know when my database is done which will be long before they run out of grants to apply for. Maybe if I put a $49,000 price tag on my work, they’ll think it’s worth reading.

Carol J. Bova

Mathews, Va.